BUSINESS + ECONOMY
PRIMARY INDUSTRIES
Primary Industries
The industry landscape in Dallas is a kaleidoscope where no single sector dominates more than 15% of the city’s economic output. This diversity is a stabilizing factor, enabling the City to navigate economic downturns with greater resilience than other cities. Approximately 83% of Dallas jobs are private sector, 11% are with state, local, or federal government, and 5% are self-employed.
THE WALL STREET
OF THE SOUTH
FINANCE
Dallas is becoming known as Wall Street’s favorite satellite location, beating Chicago and Los Angeles for the #2 spot in finance jobs in 2023. In late 2023, two finance heavyweights committed to downtown Dallas: Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. with a 5,000-person, 880k-sf new build, and Bank of America with a 30-story high-rise.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
THRIVING AND
WELL IN DALLAS
HEALTH CARE
The growth in Dallas’s health care industry is fueled by the influx of corporate relocations. For every 100 jobs added or relocated, another 100 essential services jobs, including health care, are needed to meet the growing demand. Fortunately, Dallas is home to a world-class health care industry, a true ecosystem of services, manufacturing, research, and goods distribution.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
GAINING IN RANKS AS
A TECH SUPERSTAR
TECHNOLOGY
The great tech exodus from the West Coast has helped Dallas claim a spot in the ranks of the Top five tech centers in the country. This is a full circle from 1958, when the microchip was invented at Texas Instruments, ushering in the information age and the digital era. In recent years, the following companies have expanded or relocated in Dallas:
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
A GROWING INDUSTRY
CLUSTER IN DALLAS
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Professional services jobs have grown faster in Texas than in the rest of the nation since 2020. This influx of jobs has resulted in an industry cluster that makes up a significant portion of the Dallas economy. Professional services jobs primarily migrate to areas where there is a highly educated workforce, in addition to other economic fundamentals like low cost of labor and development costs.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Professional services jobs grow in counties with highly educated workforces
Job growth in professional services (percent)
NOTES: Job growth is depicted in professional services (NAICS codes 51, 5. and 54) over 2020-22 versus the county-level share of workers with college degrees. Bubble size shows the relative population.
Texas counties with a population above 50,000 are shown. SOURCES: Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics.
THE BIOTECH HUB
OF THE FUTURE
LIFE SCIENCES/BIOTECH
In 2023, DFW was recognized as an emerging biotech hub due to its size, the quality of its institutions, and its rapid growth. DFW’s life sciences/biotech ecosystem is anchored by The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center in Fort Worth, which combined to graduate the 10th- greatest number of biological and biomedical students in the U.S. in 2022.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Dallas was recently chosen to be the home of one of three national sites for ARPA-H, a new federal agency with a $2.5B budget to advance the development of high-potential, high-impact biomedical and health research. This is due to a number of factors, including:
A 17% INCREASE IN THE LIFE SCIENCES LABOR POOL SINCE 2019 (SURPASSING THE NATIONAL AVERAGE OF 13.7%)
R&D EMPLOYMENT CONCURRENTLY INCREASED BY 44.5%, RANKING 3RD IN THE NATION.
$1.6 BILLION IN LIFE SCIENCES VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDING BETWEEN 2018 AND 2022