Net Job Growth is Bigger in Texas

The Triangle business journal highlighted a few local cities, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, that ranked in the list of best of national job growth in 2008. Out of the top 88 cities only 15 actually had a net gain in jobs in 2008 with most losing several thousand net jobs within the year.

The article didn't seem to have much to say about the fact that four out of the top five cities on the list were in Texas (Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin). That was pretty impressive to me. Only Washington DC represented any other part of the nation in the top five. Each of the cities in Texas that topped the list gained ~10,000+ jobs and Houston gained nearly 60,000.

I need to visit Texas some more this year and talk to some business owners to find out what's driving the growth down there. Many of those cities and certainly Austin are known as up-and-coming technology business centers but I didn't realize the growth was so out of proportion with the rest of the country.

Or maybe it was simply that the job loss due to macro economic challenges was less for this region. Regardless, something is different and inquiring minds want to know.

Durham created 1,700 net jobs and ranked 11th which was due in small part to iContact hiring around 80 employees in 2008 which was pretty cool to see.