Texas cities cleaned up on Forbes‘ “Best Cities for Jobs” lists this year. The magazine ranked the country’s top thirty cities for job growth, and twelve Texas cities made the cut. On the whole, Forbes‘ Joel Kotkin found that cities with fewer than one million inhabitants were adding jobs at the fastest rate.
Forbes ranked all the country’s 398 metropolitan statistical areas using Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data from November 2000 to January 2012. “Rankings are based on recent growth trends, mid-term growth, long-term growth and the region’s momentum,” Kotkin explained. “We also broke down rankings by size since regional economies differ markedly due to their scale”
Five small Texas cities cracked the top ten of Forbes‘ “Best Small Cities for Jobs” list, which looked at 242 metropolitan statistical areas of cities with less than 150,000 jobs:
1. Odessa – 9.5 percent employment growth
2. Midland – 6.3 percent employment growth
4. San Angelo – 4.3 percent employment growth
9. Lubbock – 2.8 percent employment growth
10. Laredo – 5.6 percent employment growth
Three mid-sized Texas cities made Forbes‘ list of the top ten “Best Mid-Size Cities For Jobs.” The magazine looked at a total of 91 MSAs with “employment rolls between 150,000 and 450,000” to make the list:
2. Corpus Christi – 4.1 percent employment growth
3. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission – 3.8 percent employment growth
4. El Paso – 1.0 percent employment growth
And four large Texas cities made Forbes‘ list of “Best Big Cities For Jobs, 65 MSAs “that each have more than 450,000 jobs:”
1. Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos – 2.2 percent employment growth
2. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown – 3.3 percent employment growth
4. Fort Worth-Arlington – 2.7 percent employment growth
6. Dallas-Plano-Irving – 1.9 percent employment growth
