Texas may have plenty of other inherent economic advantages, including a central location and long international border, but its high concentration of major metropolitan areas is also a major factor behind the state’s long-term success, a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas argues.
The state additionally benefits from the proximity of those major cities to each other — the Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan areas are all less than 300 miles from each other — said Laila Assanie, a senior business economist at the bank who worked on the report, because of an agglomeration effect that enables firms to easily share talent and collaborate.
“There’s a flow of ideas, so more innovation happens,” Assanie told The Dallas Morning News. “And we see this play out in history.”
Called “At the Heart of Texas,” the bank’s new report aims to offer a comprehensive look at the economies of 12 of the state’s metro areas, including the four major Texas Triangle metros — which all rank among the country’s 25 most populous — and smaller urban areas like Tyler-Longview and Amarillo. The Dallas Fed last published a “Heart of Texas” report in late 2018; for this edition, researchers included data from 2016 through 2023.
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It’s a time period that reflected the state’s particularly strong economic recovery from the pandemic, which was driven by Texas’ relatively lax business shutdown policies and its lower cost of living, Assanie said, which drew more people to the state amid the broader remote work boom.
The report focused on what it refers to as “industry clusters,” or groups of similar businesses that end up concentrating together and, because of the enhanced benefits that come from concentration — like specialized industry knowledge and resources — “typically exceed the national average in their share of employment, output and earning.”
To measure each Texas metro area’s industry concentrations, the researchers created “location quotient,” or LQ, scores that compare various sectors’ local concentrations relative to the sectors’ national concentrations. The researchers also evaluated whether sectors were growing or declining in each metro area.
The analysis effectively offered new numerical insight into some of the state’s best known economic trends: In Greater Austin — a metro area that in recent years has become famous as a new tech hotbed — the researchers found that the IT manufacturing and services sector had an LQ score of 2.8, representing a concentration nearly three times that of the national average.
In metro Houston, energy and mining remained the region’s most concentrated industry, with an LQ score above 2, even as it was overtaken by business services as the sector accounting for the largest share of the region’s jobs.
In San Antonio, insurance services ranked as the most concentrated, although that industry saw modest job losses while other sectors, like the large local real estate, construction and development sector, grew rapidly. The sector also scored highly in Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine, where it registered as fast growing and highly concentrated.
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The report also offered new data on Dallas’ famous business and financial sector boom: Although neither sector registered as Dallas-Plano-Irving’s most locally concentrated (that was IT manufacturing and services), business services tallied an above-average LQ score of around 1.5.
The data also showed the business services sector was the metro area’s largest, representing more than 17% of all jobs, and among its fastest-growing. Dallas’ surging financial sector, representing nearly 5% of local jobs, recorded a concentration score of around 1.8.
A diversifying economy
The Dallas region’s emerging financial and business sector prominence does carry some risk, Assanie said, because it means Dallas is more closely tied to the global and national finance sectors and therefore more vulnerable to a potential downturn. The region’s rapid growth has also led to new challenges, including housing affordability issues and longer commutes, the report noted.
Yet in recent years D-FW’s business sector has also diversified, Assanie added, while the region retains several economic advantages, including an educated workforce and strong local talent pool. Dallas’ recent boom has also created “a critical mass of companies,” the report argued, that will continue attracting still more companies.
The researchers remain bullish. “Overall we feel good about the Dallas economy — we think Dallas is strongly positioned to keep growing,” Assanie said.
Analysts also expect Texas to recover some of its economic mojo: In 2025, employment in the state was virtually flat, representing a major downshift from previous years, when the state added jobs at an average of around 2%. This year, though, economists expect the state to add around 155,000 new jobs, representing a growth rate of 1.1%, according to a recent Dallas Fed projection.
The report’s authors also expect Texas to continue benefiting from AI-related investment and certain deregulatory policies, although they also cited headwinds in the form of tariff-related costs and labor shortages stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration policies.