Fort Worth Population Growth Leads Nation, Jobs Big Part of Reason

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Russ through a Creative Commons license

Cowtown has new braggin’ rights: the U.S. Census Bureau says they were the fastest-growing big city in the nation between 2000-2013. Fort Worth population saw a 42.34 percent increase in that time. Dallas lagged far behind, coming in at 24th.

The 2010 Census count for Fort Worth put the number of residents at 741,206. Compare this to a population of 534,694 just a decade earlier.

Fort Worth is the 17th-largest city in the country, and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Jump to read more! 

Other top-growth cities include Austin, listed at number three with almost 15 percent growth, and San Antonio, which grew at about half the rate of Fort Worth and came in fourth. Growth in Dallas was 2.83 percent.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user emerzon through a Creative Commons license.

Texas has consistently landed on Census “fastest growth” lists: Of large cities across the country with population of at least one million, four of the fastest-growing 20 metro areas were in Texas from 2010 to 2011: Austin, San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston.

So why the big migration to North Texas? One word: Jobs. 

Eighteen Fortune 500 companies call Fort Worth and the North Texas region home.

“Thanks to the work of our Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and the city’s economic development team, Fort Worth landed 12 major business deals in 2013,” said Mayor Betsy Price in her state of the city address. “These deals brought in just under 7,000 jobs and $430 million in capital investment. We’re going gangbusters!”

All these new residents are part of what is driving home sales in North Texas. As Joanna mentioned yesterday in her post, months of housing inventory has been less than four months in Texas since 2013, and demand for homes has far outpaced the supply, especially in big cities.

Dallas-Fort Worth has also been named a “market to watch” in 2015 by Realtor.com.

In addition to jobs, the North Texas region has lots of selling points, like a central location in the country, affordable housing, the business-friendly climate, a low cost of living, a vibrant arts scene in Dallas and Fort Worth, and proximity to DFW International Airport.