Business savvy

Hardworking Dallas suburb clocks in among America's 10 most ambitious cities

Work hard, play hard.

Photo by Roger Robinson/Visit Frisco

Frisco has landed some sweet recognition for its business-friendly atmosphere. A new ranking puts Frisco eighth among what it calls "the most business-savvy cities in America."

The Go.Verizon.com study, titled "The 15 Most Ambitious U.S. Cities," looked only at cities with at least 100,000 residents and used data from the 2019 U.S. Census.

Six factors went into the ranking the list:

Average household income.
Unemployment rate.
Percentage of people with at least a bachelor's degree.
Number of applications to start a business.
Percentage of population that starts a business.
Homeownership rate.

"Frisco residents can spend confidently: The mean household income is $153,704," Go.Verizon.com says. "Business owners in the city provide plenty of places for citizens to spend all that cash — Frisco has video game museums, vintage automobile collections, and outdoor concert venues."

The booming suburb north of Dallas — one of America's fastest-growing cities — consistently ranks high as a place to live, work, and play. One recent national survey named it the No. 6 hot spot for young professionals age 25 to 39; another found it to be a top city for women working in STEM fields; another, among the best places to buy a house (although neighbor Celina is now outpacing it for new home builds).

The city even appeared atop a ranking of the country’s best places to be stuck at home during the pandemic.

Frisco continues to attract the interest of major employers like Keurig Dr Pepper, PGA of America, and the Dallas Cowboys.

One other Texas city actually tops the Go.Verizon.com list: Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston, comes in at No. 1.

"Landing the coveted top position on our list, business owners in this suburb outside of Houston know a thing or two about doing it bigger," Go.Verizon.com says. "With a mean household income of $157,923 and an unemployment rate of only 3 percent, Sugar Land lives up to its statue of the strong-willed Stephen Austin, the 'Father of Texas.'"

Key sectors of the economy in Sugar Land, home to roughly 118,500 residents, include manufacturing, biotech, financial services, and energy. Among the major employers are Accredo Packaging, Champion X, Fluor, and Schlumberger.

Frisco and Sugar Land are the only Texas cities to make the list of 15, which is dominated by California communities: West Covina (2), Torrance (3), Santa Clarita (4), Carlsbad (5), Norwalk (6), Thousand Oaks (9), Fremont (11), and Burbank (14). Rounding out the list are: Pembroke Pines, Florida (7), Coral Springs, Florida (10), Columbia, Missouri (12), Scottsdale, Arizona (13), and Miami Gardens, Florida (15).

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A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site InnovationMap.com.

rankings

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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