Austin – America’s Next Boom Town

Over the past 3-4 years, there has been a constant stream of press about just how awesome Austin is. The capital of Texas is named so often with such positive regard, it is impossible to remember all the categories we get favorable mentions in.

Favorable Mentions

To give some frame of reference, that list includes, but is not limited to:

Job growth
Cost of doing business
Best places for business and careers
Education
Best large city to live in
Top 10 fittest cities
10 best cities for the next decade
Top 10 richest cities in the US
Top 10 fastest-growing cities

You get the picture — the list goes on and on.

All this press is founded on facts about ATX, and these reviews are all with good reason — the place is just bloody brilliant.

Growth Metrics

On January 14 2016, Forbes published another article called “America’s Next Boom Towns.” The four Texas cities that made it into the top 10 in the article have all have enjoyed double-digit job growth from 2010 through 2014. The factors that were taken into consideration to make their determination — from the 53 largest metropolitan statistical areas (with a population greater than 1 million) — include the following eight metrics: Percentage of children, birth rate, net domestic migration, percentage of population between 25 – 44 with a bachelor degree, income growth, unemployment rate and population growth.

With that last metric, population growth, Austin was the leader in the pack, with 13 percent increase in just four years. Secondly, the educated portion of the Austin population — from ages 25 to 44 — rests at 43.7 percent, which is way north of the national average of 33.6 percent.

Silicon Valley of the South

I moved here from Dublin, Ireland, 21 years ago to work for Dell. This was well before all the buzz and hype that we see about Austin in the media today. In the 21 years since I moved here, the “Live Music Capital of The World” has continued to grow as a high-tech city, now known as the “Silicon Valley of the South.”

Today, in addition to its home-grown tech giant, Dell, Austinites (most of them) are proud to have corporate residents that include Apple (their 2nd biggest campus), Samsung, Rackspace, IBM, VMWare, BazzaarVoice, HomeAway and Retailmenot.

In addition to the larger, well-established companies, Austin’s hottest startups include Sparefoot, WP Engine, Spredfast and Civitas Learning.

Hi-Tech

According to an article posted in BuiltinAustin.com, of the top 100 tech companies in Austin, 31 have been here for over 15 years, 25 for 10-15 years, 34 for 5-10 years, and 10 for less than five years. Out of those same top 100 companies, the largest sector is software at 57 percent followed by consumer Web at 16 percent, agency 11 percent, B2B Web 10 percent and e-commerce at 6 percent.

So, are most Austinites happy with all the big tech companies moving to town? An inescapable truth about living in such a great place is: the more people that find out about it, the more will move here.

Austin has seen numbers that reflect somewhere in the region of 150-200 people per day moving here for the last few years. The last number I remember was that it was a city of 1 million (the same as Dublin), but I saw recently that we are actually closer to 2 million now, and expect to be at 3 million by 2020 or something. 🙂

Let’s just hope there is a start-up that launches soon with serious innovation in the urban traffic space.