New study says Houston is best city to grow business

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Houston has been lauded for being home to fast-growing companies. Photo via Getty Images

The Bayou City has again received recognition as a top hub for business.

According to a new study by business revenue experts The RevOps Team, Houston is one of the cities in the US with 10 or more companies listed in the S&P 500, and has been named as the number one city with the fastest growing businesses in the U.S. Houston scored the highest Average Business Growth (ABG) at 26.7 percent. The business experts divided the data from the S&P 500 Index to see what businesses had the highest share-price growth in the last year.

Out of the 28 states and the cities with 10 or more businesses listed in the S&P 500, Houston was No. 1t for growing businesses with Atlanta, in second place with 15 companies listed and reaching an ABG of 24.2 percent. Two cities in Texas ranked in the top five with Dallas taking third place at 14.9 percent.

Texas ranked fifth place overall in the top five states for business growth with high-performing businesses like Vistra. Vistra was the company with the highest growth in Texas at 277.68 percent, followed by NRG Energy (NRG) with 170.43 percent and Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) at 69.13 percent.

“You need to be ready to both leverage opportunity and adapt to challenges,” Kerri Linsenbigler of RevOps Team said in a news release. “Growing a business wherever you are in the U.S. is not for the faint-hearted, and business owners in Texas will be proud that they have ranked highly in the top five.”

Earlier this month, over a dozen Houston-based companies made U.S. News and World Report's collection of the "Best Companies to Work For" in 2024-2025.

In December, the city was ranked among the 25 best metropolitan areas to start a small business in a report by personal finance website The Credit Review placed Houston in the No. 22 spot.

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Planned KBR spinoff scores $1B NOAA deal for extreme weather forecasting

weather watch

Amid a major spinoff, Houston-based KBR's Mission Technology Solutions business has been awarded a five-year contract for up to $1.1 billion from NOAA’s National Weather Service to help predict and combat extreme weather conditions.

Under the follow-on Commercial Data Program National Mesonet Program (CDP NMP) contract, KBR will provide weather and observational data from commercial stations, university and research campuses, and other non-federal providers nationwide. The information collected will assist in predicting severe temperatures and high-impact weather conditions like extreme storms.

"This award underscores KBR's proven track record of delivering vital data that strengthens national forecasting capabilities," Todd May, KBR’s senior vice president of Mission Technology Solutions, said in a news release.

According to a separate release from NOAA, the contract expands upon KBR's existing relationship with the agency. KBR will work with about 70 private industry partners on services such as data recording, collection, aggregation and processing, and will lead the CDP NMP's "network of networks."

“NOAA gathers environmental information from a wide variety of sources, and a growing list of private industry partners have joined our agency to collect this vital data,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said in the release. “This agreement streamlines the process that turns raw data into the gold-standard forecasts that Americans depend on.”

KBR will utilize its Speed to Mission ImpactSM technology for the project to supply data from across regions, measurement types, and system configurations. Both KBR and NOAA say the expanded data collection contract will help the agency create more accurate and timely forecasts, particularly for severe weather and extreme events, while also creating a path for new weather-observation technologies.

KBR has supported the CDP NMP for more than 9 years. The program will be managed in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"We're driving expanded integration of commercial sensor and data sources into this platform and are honored to know our work helps forecasters give their communities earlier warnings and more time to prepare for dangerous weather,” May added in a release.

KBR’s Mission Technology Solutions business will be rebranded as Trinzic after its planned spin-off, the company announced last month. The spin-off is expected to close in January 2027.

Trinzic will work as an independent, publicly traded company focused on technology and engineering services for the space and national security sector. KBR will remain a separate publicly traded company that will focus on sustainable technology and services to support the energy transition.

This is the salary required to live comfortably in Texas in 2026

Money Matters

A new national report looking at the income it takes to live comfortably in each of the 50 states has revealed Texans need to earn slightly less now than a year ago.

SmartAsset analyzed what a single individual, as well as family of four, must earn to cover minimum basic needs adjusted using the 50/30/20 budgeting rule. The resulting estimate represents the annual, pre-tax income needed to live comfortably in every U.S. state.

A single, full-time worker needs to make $90,563 to live comfortably in the Lone Star State, the report found, which is down a meager 0.2 percent from last year ($90,771).

Under the 50/30/20 budgeting strategy, that means a single Texas earner would have $45,282 to spend on necessities like housing and utilities, $27,169 for discretionary spending, and $18,113 for emergencies or retirement savings.

Texas ranked 34th nationally in SmartAsset's list of states with the highest income needed for a single adult to live "in sustainable comfort" in 2026. Only five other states — Tennessee, Maryland, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Mississippi — saw a decline in the income needed to live comfortably this year.

For a family of four to live comfortably in Texas, income requirements change significantly, according to the findings. To support a two-child household, a family needs $203,424 in combined total household income to be considered financially stable. This is down slightly from 2025, when SmartAsset reported a family of four in needed $204,922 to live comfortably in Texas.

This is a comfortable lifestyle for a family of four in Texas, according to the report:

$101,712 dedicated to necessities and living expenses
$61,027 dedicated to discretionary spending
$40,685 dedicated to emergencies, savings, or debt repaymen

According to the report, a family of four now needs to make at least $200,000 to live comfortably in 40 U.S. states, a figure that is far out of reach for many American families.

"As housing, grocery, transportation and other essential costs pressure household budgets, earning a six-figure salary no longer guarantees financial comfort in much of the U.S.," the report said. "A single adult now needs at least $80,000 a year to live comfortably in every state, while the threshold exceeds $100,000 in nearly half of states. For a family of four, the income needed to live comfortably is as much as $329,000."

Still, earning the minimum income to live comfortably in Texas doesn't guarantee financial stability in the Lone Star State's major cities. Earlier this year, SmartAsset determined single residents in Houston need to make about $90,000 to qualify as financially stable, while families of four need around $205,000.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Texas is the 7th hardest working state in America for 2026, says report

Labor Day Report

Texans pride themselves on being industrious, and a new report has confirmed Texas as one of the 10 most hardworking states in America in 2026.

The Lone Star State claimed the No. 7 spot this year in a slight dip from its 2025 ranking, where it appeared in the top five. Texas last ranked 7th in 2024, but the state has consistently appeared among the top 10 for nearly a decade.

WalletHub determined the rankings after analyzing 10 "direct" and "indirect" work factors across all 50 states, and then graded each metric on a 100-point scale, where a score of 100 signified the "hardest working." Analysts then examined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the states.

There was only a 10.32-point difference between Texas and South Dakota, who claimed the top spot as America's hardest working state in 2026 with a score of 64.59 out of a possible 100 points.

Texas ranked 6th nationally in the "direct" work factors category, which examined the following six metrics:

The state's average workweek hours.
Employment rates.
The share of households where no adults work.
The share of workers leaving vacation time unused.
The share of "engaged" workers — those that are "involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace," as defined by Gallup.
The rate of "idle youth" — individuals aged 18-24 who are not currently enrolled in school, not working, and have no degree beyond a high school diploma or GED.

Texas ties with Louisiana for the second highest average workweek hours nationwide, with Alaska topping the list with the No. 1 longest workweeks in America. Alaska is the only state where workers clock in more than 40 hours per week at their jobs, with WalletHub reporting Alaskans work 41.4 hours on average weekly.

In the "indirect" work factors category — which encompassed workers' average commute times, the share of workers with multiple jobs, annual volunteer hours per resident, and the average leisure time spent per day — Texas ranked 36th nationwide.

Here's how WalletHub ranked Texas in three individual metrics:

No. 10 – Average commute times
No. 20 – Average leisure time spent per day
No. 30 – Employment rates

According to the World Economic Forum, Americans clock in about 1,800 hours at work per year on average, which is 468 more hours per year than workers in Germany. And many are leaving vacation time on the table, WalletHub says.

"Even when given the chance to take time off, many Americans won’t, as nearly half of workers don't expect to use all of their allotted vacation days," the report said. "It is possible to work hard without overdoing it, though. Hard work is key to success, and the residents of some states understand that better than others."

The top 10 hardest working states in America in 2026 are:

No. 1 – South Dakota
No. 2 – North Dakota
No. 3 – Alaska
No. 4 – Hawaii
No. 5 – Wyoming
No. 6 – Nebraska
No. 7 – Texas
No. 8 – New Hampshire
No. 9 – Tennessee
No. 10 – Georgia

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