Houston and Dallas can look forward to more business opportunities this year, according to a series of positive forecasts.
Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth are expected to grow more than most other mega-metro areas in the nation, according to a December report on global cities by economic forecasting firm Oxford Economics.
Both cities will see a steady rise in compound GDP growth at 2.4 percent, topped only by San Francisco, which will grow 2.7 percent between now and 2023, it found. The growth rate for Houston is expected to rise from 1.5 percent in 2019 to 1.9 percent in 2020.
San Francisco’s high cost of living and affordability issues mean that the Houston and Dallas regions could one day challenge the Golden Gate city’s spot as the nation's growth leader, according to Oxford Economics.
In a similar vein, economic development organization Greater Houston Partnership predicted 42,300 new jobs in Houston over the course of 2020. Jobs will appear as health care, government, food services and construction sectors grow. However, retail, energy and information sectors will see job losses.
Predictions of job growth were repeated by Moody's Analytics, which forecast Texas will add 1 million new jobs by 2023 and become the city with the third-highest job growth nationwide.
Texas as a whole was also praised. Forbes magazine, in its annual listing of the best U.S. states for business, named Texas the second best state after North Carolina, pointing to a new Apple campus in Austin.
Texas has experienced strong growth in recent years. The state saw the fourth-highest injection of venture capital in 2018 and 2019, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Texas also saw the fourth-highest number of new business launches among U.S. cities in 2018, according to Forbes.
Not all is sunny going forward, as the University of Houston's Institute for Regional Forecasting said in a recent report on the chances of a recession in Houston. It found a falling oil price has led to job losses in the oil industry, but this should only slightly dampen the region's growing economy. Houston’s economy may grow moderately through 2024 in spite of the slowdown.
The good news for Texas comes against the background of a slowing U.S. economy, according to an infographic tweeted by Oxford Economics on Dec. 23, 2019.
