Written by Dom Nicastro for the CMS Wire.
They may want to “Keep Austin Weird” in the southernmost U.S. capital city. However, “Keep Austin Growing” may be more appropriate for Austin these days.
Austin continues its surge as one of the top American tech hubs. Many say it now rivals Silicon Valley and may be crawling out of the COVID-19 pandemic in a business sense even better than its California counterpart. Austin has regained 96% of spring 2020’s pandemic-related job losses, according to a report last month by the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Not that Silicon Valley is doing poorly in this arena, though California as a whole doesn’t have great numbers.
We covered Silicon Valley in our first installment of our post-COVID US regional tech tub tour. We now move on to the Lone Star State’s capital. The advantages of being a tech company in Austin are well-documented by now: much lower cost of living than other tech cites, no state income taxes, terrific year-around weather and a lively social life and music scene, Austin business people told us.
Growth and Accolades for Both Austin and the Lone Star State
Austin has seen more than five times the nation’s population growth rate between 2010 and 2020, at 33.7%. It’s more than double the growth of Texas itself (16.8%). Austin has nearly doubled in population from 2000 (1.24 million) to 2020 (2.29 million), according to the United States Census. Employment growth in Austin has remained consistently above Texas’ and the U.S. between 2010 and 2020, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
The accolades dovetail growth in Austin, too. CompTIA’s Tech Town Index 2020 named the Austin-Round Rock metro area No. 1 for the second year in a row, rising from No. 3 in 2018. Tech companies just keep coming, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce: there were 46 new tech companies in Austin in 2018, and 58 in 2019 that translated to 4,648 new jobs. CompTIA reported 68,323 IT jobs in Austin posted between August 2019 and July 2020, an increase of more than 19,000 over the year before.
Further, CBRE Research, based on strong job and population growth prospects, reported in its Investor Intentions Survey 2021 that Austin displaced Greater Los Angeles as the most preferred market in 2021, buoyed by proven labor market resilience during the pandemic and a steady growth outlook. Dallas/Forth Worth came in second, making it a 1-2 Texas combo at the top.
Inc. 5000’s list of top-growing U.S. private companies places five in the 100 from Austin:
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28. Empowering a Billion Women (EBW2020)
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49. OJO Labs
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77. Literati
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79. Sips by
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87. AdOutreach