New study shows ATX had the strongest labor force participation among large metro areas
Austin has the hottest job market in Texas, and it’s considered one of the best in the country.
That’s according to The Wall Street Journal’s annual ranking of America’s hottest job markets. The Texas capital ranked No. 7 overall — tied with Nashville — and beat out Dallas (No. 10), Houston (No. 19) and San Antonio (No. 25, tied with Denver and Boston).
This is the fifth year the WSJ has conducted the analysis with Moody’s Analytics, which ranks areas based on unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, job growth, labor force growth and wage growth.
Salt Lake City took the top spot this year, followed by three cities in Florida: Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa. Oklahoma City came in at No. 5, followed by Miami at No. 6.
Austin, which fell five spots in this year’s ranking, had the strongest labor-force participation among large metro areas, according to the WSJ.
The Texas capital became an affordable alternative to Silicon Valley during the pandemic, which fueled a migration of companies and workers — many in the tech sector — to Central Texas. And while many large internet-facing companies here such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Google LLC retrench with layoffs, global tech heavyweights like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Tesla Inc. and Apple Inc. have made huge investments in the Austin area, positioning them to add thousands more employees here in the coming decade.
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturer is already the biggest tech employer in the Austin area, but its lightning-fast growth now has it neck-and-neck with H-E-B as the largest private-sector employer in the region — a crown Tesla appears poised to own in the near future. Tesla finished last year with 22,777 employees at its gigafactory in eastern Travis County.
Published by the Austin Business Journal.
