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30 Cities That Are Primed for Meteoric Job Growth
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Everything is bigger in Texas, including projected job growth in the years to come.
If it’s jobs you’re after, look no further than the Lone Star State.
By 2028, job growth is predicted to surge by double digits in 34 U.S. cities, according to Money’s analysis of data provided by the economic research firm Moody’s Analytics, and more than a dozen of those cities are located in Texas.
Moody’s estimated the growth in jobs over a five-year period from 2023 to 2028 for over 900 U.S. cities nationwide, and the firm shared its latest projections with Money. Based on these cities, national job growth is expected to be around 3.25% over that same time period.
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View RatesCities where jobs are expected to boom
Outside of Texas, several cities in Florida, Arizona and Colorado are projected to have a strong influx of jobs in the coming years. On the other hand, none of the top cities for job growth are in the Northeast or West Coast.
Here are all the cities Moody’s expects to have at least a 10% growth in jobs between 2023 and 2028:
- New Braunfels, Texas: 21%
- Conroe, Texas: 16.7%
- The Woodlands, Texas: 16.7%
- Missouri City, Texas: 16.3%
- Sugar Land, Texas: 16.3%
- Allen, Texas: 16.3%
- Frisco, Texas: 15.5%
- McKinney, Texas: 15.5%
- Plano, Texas: 15.5%
- Denton, Texas: 15.5%
- Flower Mound, Texas: 15.5%
- Lewisville, Texas: 15.5%
- Kissimmee, Florida: 15.2%
- San Marcos, Texas: 14.7%
- Cedar Park, Texas: 14.3%
- Georgetown, Texas: 14.3%
- Round Rock, Texas: 14.3%
- Casa Grande, Arizona: 14%
- Maricopa, Arizona: 14%
- San Tan Valley, Arizona: 14%
- Franklin, Tennessee: 12%
- Wesley Chapel, Florida: 11.7%
- Murfreesboro, Tennessee: 11.3%
- Palm Coast, Florida: 11.1%
- Caldwell, Idaho: 11%
- Nampa, Idaho: 11%
- Castle Rock, Colorado: 11%
- Highlands Ranch, Colorado: 11%
- Parker, Colorado: 11%
- Ashburn, Virginia: 11%
- Southaven, Mississippi: 11%
- Port St. Lucie, Florida: 10.4%
- Frederick, Maryland: 10.2%
- Pearland, Texas: 10%
Why Texas dominates job growth
Texas has been a job-creating powerhouse over the past several years, and Moody’s projections suggest many Texas towns will keep the trend going for the foreseeable future.
Such healthy job forecasts have, in part, led to several Texas cities like Flower Mound, Round Rock and Sugar Land appearing as mainstays on Money’s rankings of the Best Places to Live and Best Places to Retire over the past several years.
According to Texas’s state labor department, the state reached a total of 14.1 million jobs last year and has been experiencing “27 consecutive months of new series employment highs” thanks to booms in the oil, financial services and construction industries.
On Friday, though, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas hinted that the streak may soon be coming to an end.
“We’re cleared for landing,” said Pia Orrenius, the vice president of the Dallas Fed, “landing back to our long run trend rate of growth.” The Dallas Fed said it expects the state to add 2% more jobs by the end of 2024 — a healthy pace but one slower than the state’s meteoric growth of late.
Even so, Moody’s projections suggest several Texas towns didn’t get the memo.
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 300 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on some of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Places to Live, Best Places to Travel and Best Hospitals. He regularly contributes data reporting for Best Colleges, Best Banks and other lists as well. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.