Workin’ it
Austin sizzles as the hottest U.S. job market, says Wall Street Journal
Austin’s job market continues to be on a roll. For the third consecutive year, a study by The Wall Street Journal and Moody’s Analytics crowns Austin the country’s hottest job market among major metro areas.
In ranking the 55 metros with at least 1 million residents, the study looked at five attributes: job growth, unemployment rate, share of adults working or looking for work, change in the size of the workforce, and change in average weekly wages. Austin ranked first for job growth and share of adults working or looking for work, third for change in the size of the workforce, fourth for change in average weekly wages, and 17th for unemployment rate.
A ranking published in January by WalletHub, a personal finance website, put Austin at No. 5 among the best cities for jobs in 2022. Ahead of Austin were Columbia, Maryland; Salt Lake City; San Francisco; and Portland, Maine.
According to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Austin ranked as the best-performing job market among the 50 biggest metro areas from February 2020 to March 2022. During that period, the number of jobs in the Austin area rose by 7 percent, the chamber says. In May 2021, Austin became the first Texas metro to regain all of the jobs lost at the onset of the pandemic, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas says.
Of course, the tech industry has driven much of the success of Austin’s job market, thanks to ramped-up hiring at big and small tech companies.
“In 2021, Austin cemented its status as a blossoming tech hub after recording record-high population growth and becoming the new location for Tesla’s headquarters,” Fortunesays.
Appearing behind Austin in The Wall Street Journal ranking, in descending order, are Nashville; Raleigh, North Carolina; Salt Lake City; and Jacksonville, Florida.
Elsewhere in Texas:
- Dallas-Fort Worth sits at No. 11.
- San Antonio sits at No. 21.
- Houston sits at No. 52.
