Brittney Reeves had been in New York City for nine years when Microsoft asked her to consider working in Dallas. She jumped at the chance.
“I did New York, from Bushwick to Washington Heights,” she said. “But being in my 30s, I understood what kind of benefits could come from moving to Texas, and how I could really get into that second stage of my life.”
Reeves moved into an apartment near Victory Park just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and soon after, Microsoft closed its offices and asked employees to work from home. Reeves threw herself into her new adventure.
In her first year, she bought a house in the Trinity Groves area, just west of downtown Dallas. She started a group chat with other young professionals and joined several local organizations, including the Junior League, Junior Achievement and Dallas Regional Chamber.
“People are always asking me, ‘How do you like Texas?’” said Reeves, who’s 34 and single with a 2-year-old Doberman. “I joke that I don’t plan on moving unless somebody offers me a job that’ll let me afford a $2 million brownstone in Brooklyn.”
She cited “the ease” of living here, the sense of community, the low tax burden and affordable housing, and pro sports: “I’m not going anywhere,” Reeves said. “I just love the quality of life.”
Such testimonials help explain how the Texas economy continues to lead the nation in many measures of growth, including jobs, gross domestic product and labor force. Attracting newcomers, especially young professionals like Reeves, has long been a key part of Texas’ success, and it’s become even more important since the pandemic.
In general, about half the state’s population growth over the past two decades has come from net migration, a blend of people moving here from other states and countries.
International migration has fallen sharply, especially after the pandemic. But domestic migration surged as more people embraced remote work and took the opportunity to relocate to Texas – a more affordable region with strong growth prospects.
These migrants fill crucial gaps in Texas’ workforce and bolster its human capital. That’s vital during a time when baby boomers are retiring and birth rates are declining, according to a recent report by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and University of North Florida.
Those arriving here tend to be younger and more educated than the overall population in Texas. They’re more likely to work in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – as well as in management.
“Migrants differ in their attributes from each other and from native Texans, and this is also why they are so important,” the report said. “The state economy depends on these predominantly young people to contribute to growth, now and in the future, in a diverse set of industries and occupations.”
Texas has been growing jobs roughly twice as fast as the nation, the report said, and “consistent and sustained net in-migration from other states and abroad makes this possible.”
It’s been almost three years since the pandemic hit, and Texas has come through it well from a migration and population perspective. That’s both surprising and not surprising, said Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida and co-author of the report.
The surprise is that Texas has thrived while international migration declined sharply, she said. Texas and California are among the states that rely heavily on newcomers from other countries, and those numbers tend to spike when Mexico’s economy slumps.
What’s not surprising is that Texas made up the difference by attracting even more people from other states, especially California, New York and Illinois.
Net domestic migration to Texas has averaged 108,000 a year for the past two decades. Last year, the state drew 170,307 new arrivals from other states, the report said.
“Domestic migration really hinges on how well the Texas economy is doing compared with the rest of the country,” Zavodny said. “It ebbs and flows on the strength of Texas.”
Texas’ sheer size is a major draw, and that’s been amplified by the state’s diversity in jobs, ethnicities and geography: “If you start in one part of Texas and don’t love it, you can move to another part,” Zavodny said.
After the pandemic hit, the labor force declined sharply as people dropped out of the workforce to avoid COVID-19 and care for family members. It took Texas about seven months to rebuild its workforce to pre-pandemic size; it took the U.S. about two-and-a-half years.
Since the Great Recession in mid-2009, Texas has grown its labor force over three times faster than the U.S., and migration played a big part.
Rich Lancaster, 34, came to Dallas for the chance to join Year Up, a nonprofit program that helps young adults launch business careers. He, his wife and two children moved from Philadelphia in September, and they’ve settled in Grapevine, where they plan to buy a house in a few years.
“Everything hit all our marks – the school district, the job market, the housing,” said Lancaster, who’s always lived on the East Coast. “It was easy to see this was an area we would want to raise our family.”
The big negative? “From the outside looking in, the politics is huge,” he said. “You hear about open carry and concealed carry, and you’re afraid everybody’s got weapons.”
His lived experience has not included any such encounters. Instead, he said, strangers have been friendly and welcoming, and his family made great memories at the State Fair.
“Being here and actually seeing it, it’s not that political,” Lancaster said. “It’s not as harsh as people say.”
Lancaster earned his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University, about 45 miles from Philadelphia, and added a master’s degree from Penn State. He’s reconnected with several college friends, who also moved their families to the Dallas area.
“It’s good to see familiar faces,” Lancaster said. “It feels like home already.”
His college credentials are not that unusual for newcomers from other states. Twenty percent of domestic migrants to Texas have a graduate or professional degree compared with 11% of the Texas population, the migration report said. And 30% of domestic migrants to Texas have a bachelor’s degree compared with 21% of the state’s population.
More education can lead to more jobs in STEM fields and management, where demand often outstrips supply. But international migrants also are more likely to have less than a high school degree, and they tend to fill more low-skilled jobs in manufacturing, construction, food preparation and personal care, the report said.
“It’s very much to the state’s advantage to have people coming in who are different from those already here,” Zadovny said. “You want the complements, and that’s what they are.”
While Texas welcomes thousands of newcomers every year, it also loses thousands who move away, often because they see stronger career prospects elsewhere.
Those moving out look a lot like those coming in. A similar share of out-migrants from Texas have college degrees and are nearly as likely to work in STEM fields, professional services and health care. Movers – both arriving and departing the state – tend to be much younger, and are almost twice as likely to be in their 20s.
“While that may seem to suggest that young adults moving into Texas just offset those moving out, the state actually gains young adults on net since inflows are bigger than outflows,” the report said.
In 2016, Trista Lam came to Dallas to visit a friend, who urged her to check out the “booming” suburbs north of the city. Within two weeks, she had a job as a graphic designer for a jewelry company, and she soon left Miami and bought a house in Frisco.
Since then, she’s moved to a house in Plano and revamped her career. She joined some technology groups and took a certificate program at Southern Methodist University to add tech skills. Today, she’s a senior user experience designer at Alkami Technology in Plano.
“There are a lot of good UX designers and researchers in the D-FW area, and I did a lot of networking,” said Lam, who’s 40. “Being in D-FW and knowing people helped a lot” in the transition to a new field.
She plans to stay long-term, and she helped recruit her sister’s family here. One of the biggest attractions is the large Asian community in Plano – something she had no idea about before her move.
Most of her new friends and colleagues have relocated from California, New York and Chicago: “That was a big sign for me,” Lam said. “I like that it’s such a melting pot.”
While Texas may be a red state, she believes many have misconceptions of what it’s like to live here – or at least in Dallas-Fort Worth. She and her wife, for instance, have met many great folks.
“Diversity is welcome here,” Lam said. “Sometimes people have to experience Texas in order to understand it.”
Once they try it, they usually choose to stay. Texas stands apart because it has such a low rate of out-migration: “ Texas is the nation’s stickiest state,” Zavodny and Pia Orrenius, a senior economist at the Dallas Fed, wrote last year.
They cited a Dallas Fed study that found over 82% of those born in Texas remain here. But to continue growing faster than the rest of the country, Texas still needs to draw newcomers, especially young professionals.
“What the state workforce lacks can largely be made up with domestic and international in-migrants,” the report said, “as long as they are willing and able to come.”
So how to remain a magnet? Keep the cost of living affordable and jobs machine cranking, many said, and don’t forget to put out the welcome mat.
“Employers need to be innovative and welcome this younger generation of workers,” said Lancaster, who left Philly three months ago. “What Dallas can do is continue to welcome outsiders and be friendly and open.”
