Austin By Numbers

Austin is one of America's hot list cities.  The housing is affordable.  The landscape is pretty with rolling hills to the west and fields to the east.  The weather is pleasant in the spring, fall, and winter, with summer being bearable, even welcomed by heat-lovers.  The music, art, and film scenes are thriving and growing with new festivals like Austin City Limits and those established like the worldwide conference South By Southwest, otherwise known as SXSW.  There's something for everyone from rockabilly to folk music and cycling clubs to marathon teams.  So, in short, it's a cool place to hang your hat.  But what are the facts?  Let's talk about some of Austin's numbers regarding education, jobs, and other random numbers.

39.1% of Austin's adults have a bachelor's degree and 13% have graduate degrees.  A large part of this is that one of the largest universities (if not the largest now) is located in the heart of the city, just north of downtown.  With almost 50,000 students, the University of Texas at Austin supplies the city with all kinds of top talent, being a top school for many of its divisions like computer science, business, nursing, pharmacy, architecture, and engineering.

Also due to the large university, Austin has a high number of research and development firms.  There 4.9 R&D employees per capita, which is 120% of the national average.  And the number of patents is four times the US average.  Along the same lines, venture capital investment is 4.6 times the national average.

Here are the employment and company numbers.  Employment rate is 73.2%, and of the 100 largest economic cities in the nation, Austin came in at 39 for the number of total jobs.  The unemployment rate is 4%, which is far less than the national average.  Job growth has been increasing for the past 2.5 years and 33,000 jobs were added in the past year.  Some of the top employers in Austin are UT, Dell, IBM, Seton Healthcare, and government related jobs.  Also, Austin provides $65.8 billion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is 6.7% of the total Texas GDP and 0.5% of the national GDP.

Some other fun numbers...  Austin has 6% renewable energy.  Austin is known for its green incentives.  They pay for over half of your solar panels, if you are willing and your home qualifies for enough sun.  Free low-flow toilets are available.  And rebates are given out to those who get higher energy efficient A/Cs and washers / dryers.  There are 2.5 airplane boardings per capita.  Austin's new international airport provides the city with more than enough services with room to grow.  There is 79.8 miles of public transit per capita, which is quite less than half the national average.  Austin does have a bit of traffic woes at 8am and 5pm, but nothing like 5 hour commutes.  The city aims to absorb growth vertically rather than sprawl to help relieve the traffic issues.  75.2% of the population lives in high-broadband areas.  This fact is probably roots from UT being part of the pre-cursor to the internet, attracting high-tech businesses and starting Austin on its tech track.

There is no doubt that Austin has become one of the most livable and attractive cities to move to over the past couple years.  The secret is out.  Not only is Austin a great place to live because of the hills, lake, and pretty sunsets, but there are numbers to back it up.