Jobs in Texas have been booming amid lower taxes and less regulation as many companies, including construction and mining equipment giant Caterpillar, have been moving their headquarters to the state.
"While the cost of living is going up, it’s still pretty affordable to live in the area," Rachel Chang, the senior marketing manager for Legacy West, a multi-billion dollar development north of Dallas, said during an interview that aired on "Varney & Co." Friday. The development includes shops, restaurants and corporate offices.
"There’s no state income taxes, your quality of life, the amount that your dollar goes is a little bit further in Texas so I think the appeal of moving here is people having the opportunity to have a little bit more financial freedom," Chang continued.
She stressed that "there’s a lot of opportunity that comes with moving to the D-FW [Dallas-Fort Worth area]."
FOX Business’ Grady Trimble reported Friday that officials with Legacy West don’t see any signs that growth will slow down drastically in the near future.
The state ended last year with more than 13 million nonagricultural jobs, which is about 90,000 more jobs than in February 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Texas Tribune reported, citing the Texas Workforce Commission.
The news outlet, citing federal data, noted that job growth in the Lone Star State, driven by population gains, has outpaced the rest of the country recently.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, 294,700 jobs in the 12 months ending in May were added, which is about three times more than the typical annual gains before the pandemic, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month.
Also last month, Caterpillar announced it will ditch Deerfield, Illinois, and relocate its global headquarters to Irving, Texas.
"We believe it's in the best strategic interest of the company to make this move, which supports Caterpillar's strategy for profitable growth as we help our customers build a better, more sustainable world," Caterpillar chairman and CEO Jim Umpleby said in a statement at the time.
Caterpillar, which has more than 107,000 employees globally, has had a presence in Texas since the 1960s across several areas of the company. However, Illinois remains the largest concentration of Caterpillar employees anywhere in the world.
A Caterpillar spokesperson told FOX Business it expects the majority of its roughly 230 employees at its Deerfield headquarters to make the move to Irving, Texas.
Other companies that have made the move to the Lone Star State in recent years include Oracle, Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprises.
