Texas Named Home to Best Cities for Jobs This Year

This year's best city for jobs in the nation is the Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas metro once again, edging out the San Francisco area. Dallas offers consistent job and population growth, factors which put it over the top.

Dallas has recently attracted many notable companies like Boeing, Jamba Juice, Toyota's North American headquarters, and Louis Vuitton. Nearby Austin, second on the list, is bursting with tech job growth, increasing 39 percent since 2006 and 3.4 percent in 2017. Too, business and professional service jobs in Austin have risen 37.1 percent over the past 12 years, per Forbes. By contrast, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York did not score well in the ranking. Chicago saw only 0.4 percent job growth in 2017, and despite strong advocacy by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the information sector is rapidly losing, rather than gaining jobs.

Among America’s largest metropolitan areas, the economic leaders come in two flavors: Southern-fried and West Coast organic. The first group flourishes across a broad range of industries, fed by strong domestic in-migration and a friendly business climate. The other is driven largely by technology and high-end business services clustered around expensive but highly desirable urban areas. Our rankings are based on short-, medium- and long-term job creation, going back to 2006, and factor in momentum — whether growth is slowing or accelerating.

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