Thursday, March 13, 2008

Fort Worth -- #5 in Nation.

You have seen the report.

Fort Worth ranks #5 in Hottest Jobs in America. Not to shabby. Yesterday, I read about the ranking in a report by Anthony Mariani on Fort Worth Weekly's Blotch Blog. Today, it was a featured video story on Yahoo.

As I mentioned in a post last week, our job growth is "fueled" by natural gas, but also by good weather, plenty of land, an available work force, great infrastructure, and uncluttered local government. As far as cities and counties go Fort Worth is easy to work with. The other top five cities are also in the south or west, all sunshine cities, and all supportive of entrepreneurial activity. They are Atlanta, Austin, Wichita, and number 1, Salt lake City. The migration south and west continues, and will continue because of the 50 million baby-boomers who want to retire in warmer climes, and because the younger, new home buyers can find affordable housing with land.

So, Texas gets two cities of the top five. California got zero. I'm surprised that Florida didn't get one, but I don't know if this is a subjective report or a report based on hiring data.

Just in case you did not see the ABC News report, you can watch it on Yahoo.

Photo by Darwin Bell / Flickr

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting take, and thanks for the mention. A person who left a comment to my post had a good point: that there's a difference between a job and a career. Fort Worth and most other growing non-coastal cities not named Chicago may have a lot of jobs to offer, but careers? Not so much. With certain exceptions, anyone interested in the applied sciences, publishing, or other professional pursuits is going to be attracted to either of the coasts or metropolises overseas. America's growing cities, Fort Worth included, simply don't have the infrastructure to support many careers, and by "infrastructure," I mean: dynamic geographical features; a wealth of Ivy League-caliber universities; and, most importantly, history.

Francis Shivone said...

Excellent point. And I agree to some extent. Of course, if one extended that argument back a little, the USA would not even be here. It takes time for seeds to become trees and it takes time for start-ups to become multi-national corporations. A poll like that is a single faceted look at a city and can be over-analyzed. Thanks.