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Austin climbs into top-10 list of best U.S. cities to find a job

The report's author says finding a new or better job is likely high on the list for many Americans' New Year resolutions in 2026.

Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash

Austin has worked its way into 9th place in WalletHub's new study ranking the best places to find a job in 2026.

The just-released "Best Cities for Jobs (2026)" report compared 182 U.S. cities based on 31 relevant metrics "that shape the strength of local job markets" across two main categories: a socioeconomics rank and a job market rank.

WalletHub determined the top three best U.S. cities to find a job in 2026 are Scottsdale, Arizona (No. 1); Columbia, Maryland (No. 2); and Portland, Maine (No. 3).

The report found Austin's socioeconomic ranking — which covers factors such as housing affordability, median annual income, average work and commute times, transit accessibility, and more — is the 10th best in the U.S.

Austin also ranked No. 15 in the nationwide job market category, which analyzed job opportunities, employment growth, unemployment rates, job automation risk, and many other factors.

While these employment indicators are important to consider when researching the best place to find work, WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said the quality of the jobs available matters just as much as the quantity of available jobs in a city.

"There are plenty of secondary factors to take into account as well, from how easy a city makes commuting to jobs to whether it’s a good place for raising a family or engaging in recreational activities outside of work," Lupo said.

Austin was dubbed the No. 4 best place to start a career by WalletHub in 2025, and the city recently topped a separate ranking of the best cities for startups thanks to a thriving economic environment that has provided new opportunities for entrepreneurship.

Elsewhere in Texas, 10 more cities made it into the top-100 best places for finding a job: Plano (No. 7), Irving (No. 18), Grand Prairie (No. 24), Amarillo (No. 32), Garland (No. 48), Dallas (No. 54), Arlington (No. 60), Fort Worth (No.77), San Antonio (No. 78), and Corpus Christi (No. 100).

The top 10 best U.S. cities for finding a job in 2026 are:

No. 1 – Scottsdale, Arizona
No. 2 – Columbia, Maryland
No. 3 – Portland, Maine
No. 4 – South Burlington, Vermont
No. 5 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
No. 6 – Orlando, Florida
No. 7 – Plano, Texas
No. 8 – Washington, D.C.
No. 9 – Austin, Texas
No. 10 – Huntsville, Alabama

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UT ranks among 10 most cost-effective universities for tech grads

UT Austin, University of Texas at Austin, top Texas schools, best public universities, best colleges

Photo by Alexander Williams on Unsplash

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The University of Texas at Austin ranks among the 10 most cost-effective schools for college graduates pursuing careers at major tech companies, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by data science education platform DataCamp and sent directly to reporters, analyzed the 20 universities at the top of the QS World Universities list for Computer Science and Information Systems.

Researchers examined the number of grads working at five major tech companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — compared with the annual cost of attendance. Job data was gathered via LinkedIn, and tuition data came from College Scorecard.

UT lands at No. 9 in the study, with 6,598 graduates working at top tech employers and an annual cost of attendance at $18,850. The University of Washington claims the No. 1 ranking in the study, with 14,745 grads working at top tech employers and an annual cost of attendance totaling $12,777.

UT was the only Texas institution included in the study.

DataCamp and QS are not the only organizations looking to UT for computer science skills. U.S. News & World Report puts UT in:

Sixth place for analytics (undergraduate)
Seventh place for management information systems (undergraduate)
Seventh place for AI (undergraduate)
Eighth place for computer engineering (undergraduate)
Ninth place for computer science (undergraduate)
Ninth place for computer science theory (undergraduate)
A seventh-place tie for computer science (graduate)
Seventh place for computer science theory (graduate)
Eighth place for programming language (graduate)
10th place for AI (graduate)
11th place for computer systems (graduate)

Research.com also awards a No. 10 national ranking to the university’s computer science program, and CSRankings puts it at No. 13.

UT is making great strides in the super-hot AI field. In November, the university announced it had doubled the computing capacity of the Center for Generative AI, which is available only to UT faculty and student researchers. The center ranks among the world’s most powerful AI hubs in academia.

The scale of the center’s computing cluster “will allow us to create solutions to bigger real-world problems that make a difference in people’s lives,” said Adam Klivans, director of the UT-led National Science Foundation Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning, in a press release when the capacity increase was announced. "It’s exciting to accelerate discovery and to create more opportunities for our researchers to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The top 10 schools by cost effectiveness, according by DataCamp, are:

1. University of Washington: $12,777
2. Stanford University: $10,851
3. Georgia Institute of Technology: $14,588
4. University of California, Berkeley: $17,371
5. University of California, Los Angeles: $15,637
6. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: $16,109
7. Princeton University: $8,143
8. University of California, San Diego: $15,069
9. University of Michigan: $16,792
10. University of Texas at Austin: $18,850

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