DFW rivalry

Fort Worth edges out Dallas in new ranking of best cities for startups

Dallas appears at No. 15 among the country’s 20 best cities for startups.

Photo by Joe Daniel Price/Getty Images

Often, Fort Worth folks feel like they're living in the shadow of Dallas. But a new ranking of the best U.S. cities for startups flips the script by putting Dallas in Fort Worth’s shadow.

In the ranking, produced by commercial real estate platform CommercialCafé, Fort Worth appears at No. 12 among the country’s 20 best cities for startups. The city is three notches above Dallas (No. 15) and seven notches above closer neighbor Arlington (No. 19).

“Fort Worth is coming into its own and embracing the startup scene,” CommercialCafé declares.

CommercialCafé’s analysis looked at the 50 most populous cities in the U.S. For each city, CommercialCafé examined these data points: growth rate for solo businesses, startup survival rate, startup density, startup growth rate, success of Kickstarter fundraising campaigns, education levels, growth in tech employment, wage growth, rent-to-income ratio, coworking costs, and presence of millennials.

Among the factors in Fort Worth’s favor were a low rent-to-income ratio of 15 percent (versus 16 percent in Dallas), tech employment growth of 25 percent (versus 20 percent in Dallas), and millennial population growth of 11 percent (versus 10 percent in Dallas).

Still, Dallas held its own at No. 15. “Ranking third for [coworking] cost affordability and fifth for rent-to-income ratio, Dallas is a place where a tech salary can stretch a long way,” CommercialCafé notes.

As part of an economic development blueprint released in 2017, the City of Fort Worth strives to ensure “that expanding startups see the city as hospitable to their continuing growth.” That includes expanding networking opportunities for entrepreneurs in Fort Worth.

“Communities with a highly engaged, connected, and collaborative startup scene have a built-in advantage in the global competition for high-growth business development,” the city’s economic development plan says.

To help burnish its startup-welcoming attitude and promote tourism, Fort Worth — now the 13th largest city in the U.S., climbing ahead of Columbus, Ohio, and San Francisco in population last year — sent a contingent to this year’s South by Southwest confab in Austin. By contrast, Dallas had no official presence at SXSW.

“Fort Worth is a bit of a blank slate for folks,” said Robert Jameson, president and CEO of Visit Fort Worth, told Texas Monthly of Cowtown’s SXSW blitz this year. “This is an opportunity with people from all around the world, all across the country, to be able to give them a sense of what opportunities exist, what the spirit and energy is for the city of Fort Worth.”

Jameson added that Fort Worth boosters at SXSW were spreading “a message of innovation and inclusion and creativity and technology and inspiration … .”

At No. 1 in the CommercialCafé ranking was Austin. Among the standout statistics for Austin were success of Kickstarter fundraising campaigns (26 percent), tech employment growth (37 percent), millennials’ share of the population (31 percent), startup density (17.9 percent), and growth of solo businesses (3.9 percent).

One way Fort Worth hopes to emulate Austin’s startup success is by mirroring the popularity of SXSW’s interactive conference, a premier tech event that has helped forge Austin’s status as a global tech hub.

“Elevating the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival to incorporate tech-related elements that draw an international audience can serve as a vehicle for the attraction of artists, graphic designers, and related creative individuals to Fort Worth,” the city’s economic development plan says.

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Jobs report

Texas ranks among 10 best states to find a job, says new report

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

You have a better chance of landing a job in Texas than in most other states.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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