May 20
Get a Job in Austin!
Austin’s unemployment rate has dropped dramatically over the past five years, from 6 percent in 2003 to 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008, far below the national rate of 5 percent. In the face of a tightening of the national job market, Austin once again defies conventional trends and posts healthy numbers.
Employers in the Austin area take advantage of the presence of the University of Texas to reap from a pool of highly educated, talented workers and offer them incentives to remain in the area. Average wages are higher, employment in the higher-end job market is stronger, and job growth is steadier than the rest of the nation. The most popular occupations are management, professional, and related occupations with 41 percent of the overall workforce. Sales and office workers come next with 21 percent, third is service occupations with 14 percent.
Mayor Will Wynn’s plan to turn the city into an environmentally responsible, zero waste city has created a new industry – one that is causing ripples of excitement and imitation across the country. “Green” products, building designs, and plans are springing up as entrepreneurs see the writing on the wall and vie for the attention of consumers who are becoming more and more concerned with their impact on the environment.
The job force that graduates from UT Austin each year provides a constant source of young, talented, eager workers, ready to join the technology industry. Austin has become a smaller version of Silicon Valley with such technological powerhouses as Dell, IBM, Freescale Semiconductor, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and the like moving into the area. And, although Austin was bitten by the dot-com as a result of this concentration on the high-tech industry, they have already shown a strong and steady recovery.