BY THE NUMBERS

Dallas punches in at No. 2 on new list of cities that best attract business

Dallas, so attractive.

Photo by Sean Pavone/iStock

The companies, the jobs, and the people keep moving to North Texas. According to a recent report, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington ranks No. 2 among U.S. metropolitan areas for attracting new companies.

The ranking, which was researched and published by Site Selection Magazine, found that DFW attracted 426 business projects last year. This put the metro in second place of the list that analyzed larger regions.

It's the third year in a row that DFW has landed in second place, and the metro had a year-over-year improvement in number of deals; 2021 reported 389 new business projects in the area.

In fact, the top three cities – Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, respectively — have remained the same for all three years. For 2022, the Chicago metro garnered 448 projects, while Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land reportedly had 293 projects. Farther down the list, Austin-Round Rock had 132 projects, putting them at No. 7.

Site Selection's report focused on how companies can manage increasing economy digitization, and retain in-office workers while balancing skyrocketing telework opportunities.

Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking at Brookings Metro, said though the rise of remote work does "hollow out" downtowns, they're not "all doomed."

“Telework is here to stay, but it is not clear levels of telework have stabilized for the near or long term," she said. "There is also evidence that work agglomeration increases productivity. There is good reason to expect more RTO [return to office] than there has been so far.”

When discussing large, business-centered cities like Dallas, Brookings Metro senior fellow Mark Muro says the city is powered by "huge professional services, businesses, and health sectors that continue to become increasingly digital." Muro and his colleague Sifan Liu are studying highly digitized economies and their place in modern society.

“Across the nation’s 56 biggest metros, as much as 30% of all jobs were highly digital as of 2020, while low-digital jobs encompassed just 22% of the workforce,” they said in the report. “By contrast, highly digital occupations account for only 20% of the workforce in the nation’s more than 500 micropolitan areas, where low digital jobs account for 26% of the total. And pay gaps reflect those divides.”

The full report can be found on siteselection.com.

Business projects Site Selection Magazine rankings

New money

Texas Stock Exchange launches trading on 'Y'all Street' in Dallas

Photo by Oren Elbaz on Unsplash

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Two-step aside, New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange, nicknamed Y’all Street, just kicked off live trading with five stocks for now — and with lots of Lone Star ambition.

“The Texas Stock Exchange aims to revitalize competition for [stock] issuers, establish the premier venue for listings, and create a world-class trading platform for all market participants,” the exchange says in a fact sheet.

The exchange — whose Texas-influenced nickname is a nod to New York City’s Wall Street — has collected at least $275 million in investments. The roughly 90 financial backers of TXSE include Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Dell Family Office, Fortress, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Representatives of TXSE couldn’t be reached for comment. On its website, the exchange calls itself “the most well-capitalized equities exchange to ever be approved” by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Not to be outdone, NYSE has launched Dallas-based NYSE Texas and Nasdaq has expanded its presence in Dallas.

Y’all Street adds to Dallas-Fort Worth’s rising status as a major hub for financial services, with The Wall Street Journal naming North Texas the country’s second biggest financial hub after New York City. Among the biggest DFW players in financial services are:

Financial services provider Charles Schwab
Banking company Comerica
Auto lender Santander Consumer USA
Banking company Texas Capital Bancshares
Lender GM Financial
Investment bank Goldman Sachs
Financial services provider Fidelity
Banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase
Megabank Wells Fargo

“A homegrown national exchange means more jobs, more investment, and more growth opportunities for businesses and communities across the Lone Star State,” Gabriela von zur Muehlen, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the Texas Association of Business, told The Texas Tribune.

In a move that will further elevate DFW’s status as a financial powerhouse, Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000-square-foot corporate campus near the American Airlines Center. The campus, with an initial price tag of $500 million, will be able to accommodate more than 5,000 employees when it opens in 2028; it’ll be Goldman Sachs’ largest office outside New York City.

Driven by DFW, the financial services sector now plays a massive role in Texas’ status as the Financial Capital of America, as declared by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Bulent Temel, an associate professor of practice in economics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Texas Standard that TXSE “is going to boost the credibility of the Texas economy.”

Texas’ estimated gross domestic product (GDP), a yardstick for the size of an economy, climbed to a record-setting $2.9 trillion in 2025, making it the state with the second highest GDP after California. DFW’s estimated GDP in 2023 stood at $744.6 billion, eclipsing the GDP of many countries.

“The center of gravity for American capitalism is now headquartered in the Boom Belt,” Abbott proclaimed in April, referring to an 11-state region (including Texas) in the South and Southeast that’s seeing tremendous economic and population growth. “The Texas Stock Exchange is the natural extension of that capitalism. It ensures that capital markets will reflect the quadrant that is driving American growth.”

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