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(The Center Square) – Governor Greg Abbott extolled Texas’s economic prowess at a monthly meeting of the Houston Area Business Coalition Wednesday and gave an update on rebuilding the state’s business environment after sustaining losses due to his executive’s shutdown last year State had suffered orders.
Last year, Texas led the nation in oil and gas bankruptcies. From January through November 2020, 1,656 companies in Texas filed for bankruptcy, according to the Texas Lawbook, up from 610 in the same period last year. The vast majority were energy companies, followed by retailers.
Yet more and more companies are moving to Texas, drawn by lower taxes, less regulation, and more flexibility than in the predominantly blue states they left.
“Texas remains America’s promised land for doing business because we offer a business environment that is second to none,” said Abbott.
According to Site Selection Magazine, Texas has led the nation with the most new and expanded corporate facilities for nine consecutive years with 781 projects in 2020 alone. These include giants like Oracle, HP, and Tesla, who are moving or expanding their headquarters to Texas.
Tesla’s $ 1 billion auto plant has already broken ground outside of Austin, as have new Facebook, Apple and Google facilities in the state’s capital. Other big names include Axiom Space’s $ 2 billion investment in Houston, Amazon’s expansion in Waco, and TJX Cos’s project. in El Paso. And while large corporations continue to move their headquarters to Texas, so do smaller family businesses, including cheese and food processors.
As businesses continue to move to Texas and jobs remain open, the Texas Workforce Commission reports the state’s unemployment rate stood at 5.6% in September 2021, after creating 95,800 non-farm jobs and 85,300 private jobs.
Texas factory and retail sales rose for the 15th consecutive month in August 2021, although activity in the service sector slowed, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
In August of this year, more than 39 new project locations were announced in Texas, reports the State Department of Economic Development. These projects are expected to generate over $ 310 million in capital investments and 1,762 new jobs.
Texas has entered the world’s ninth largest economy in 2021 based on 2019 GDP data, according to the International Monetary Fund.
From 2015 to 2021, Texas was the tenth largest economy in the world – ahead of Canada and South Korea. Earlier this year, the Texan economy overtook Brazil’s and is the ninth largest in the world.
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