Dallas-Fort Worth Leads the U.S. in Job growth

Dallas-Fort Worth’s job base grew the fastest among the nation’s dozen biggest metro areas last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. For the year ending with November, the D-FW metro area added 100,400 jobs — a 2.8 percent increase. That was the largest increase by both percentage and sheer number. Employment grew 2.2 percent in Boston and Phoenix and 2.1 percent in Atlanta during the same period.

Much of D-FW’s growth was in professional and business services, which added 31,100 positions. That’s no surprise as regional leaders work to recruit corporate headquarters that employ thousands of highly paid workers in sprawling new developments anchored by offices.

In particular, financial services companies have expanded their head counts in areas where living costs are cheaper than in the coastal cities where those firms often have their headquarters. Charles Schwab, for instance, is expected to have 2,600 workers at its campus in Westlake that’s under construction.

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics news release, leisure and hospitality added the second-most jobs in D-FW during that year, 18,100 — a sign that the restaurants and bars that serve all those new office workers are expanding quickly to keep up.

Now, economists say, the biggest challenge in many fast-growing cities is to find enough workers to fill those jobs as baby boomers age out of the workforce and immigration slows. At the national and state levels, unemployment has been at record lows.

Still, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas predicted that Texas, whose growth has has been powered in large part by D-FW in recent years, will continue to add jobs at top speed in 2018.

As long as oil prices stay above $40 per barrel, a Dallas Fed economist said, the state is likely to expand employment 3 percent this year, adding about 366,000 jobs.

Elsewhere, health services was a major source of job gains. The category added the most jobs of any industry sector in eight metro areas, including Boston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York.

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By JILL COWAN, Economy Writer. Originally published in the Dallas Morning News, January 12, 2018. A link to the original article can be found here.