Remote workers in Houston earn far more than commuters, data shows

by the numbers

Remote workers in Houston earn 40 percent more than their commuting counterparts, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Photo via Getty Images.

In the Houston metro area, it pays to work from home.

Data published recently by the U.S. Census Bureau shows remote workers in the Houston metro earn 40 percent more than their commuting counterparts. For remote workers in the Houston area, median earnings stood at $67,500 in 2023, compared with $48,200 for other workers.

Federal data cited by Visual Capitalist indicates 11.8 percent of the Houston area’s labor pool, or nearly 460,000 people, were remote workers in 2023.

In the Dallas metro area, the difference in median earnings between remote workers and non-remote workers is even more stark. According to Census Bureau data, remote workers there earned $77,000 in 2023 — 50.7 percent more than the $51,100 for traditional workers.

Why the wide gap in pay? The Census Bureau says remote workers are more likely to be older, more likely to be white and less likely to live below the poverty line. All of these traits contribute to higher income.

Among home-based workers in the country’s five biggest metros, median earnings for remote workers were highest in the New York and Chicago areas (over $80,000) and lowest in the Houston area (under $70,000), according to the Census Bureau.

The five-metro comparison also reveals that the Houston area had the highest share (6.8 percent) of all workers, both remote and non-remote, living below the federal poverty level.

In a recent Substack post, urban planner Bill Fulton notes that remote workers in major cities typically earn 50 percent to 80 percent more than other workers do. He declares that “remote workers are far more affluent than everybody else. They are, of course, office workers, not blue-collar or service workers, and they tend to be more highly educated.”
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Houston saw the biggest year-over-year jump in tech job postings among the top 25 U.S. cities for tech job growth, according to this report. Photo via Getty Images

Houston ranks as the top market for tech job growth

By the numbers

Houston is experiencing a boom in tech employment.

A recent report from Dice, a job platform for the tech industry, says Houston saw the biggest year-over-year jump in tech job postings among the top 25 U.S. cities for those postings.

From January through October this year, the number of tech job postings in Houston soared 45.6 percent versus the same period a year earlier. That compares with a 22.8 percent statewide increase during the same time span.

“Although sometimes overshadowed by the cachet of Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, Houston is absolutely a tech hub in its own right, attracting a mix of major tech companies and VC-backed startups to join its already established base of aerospace, defense, and energy companies,” Dice says.

For the one-year period covered by the Dice report, San Antonio witnessed a 17.3 percent rise in tech job postings, with Austin at 9.6 percent and Dallas at 7.7 percent.

In citing Houston’s astronomic showing, Dice notes that the region benefits from the presence of tech employers like Asurion, AWS, Fiserv, Dell, IBM, and Siemens, along with a number of venture-backed startups.

Top tech occupations in the Houston area include software developer/engineer, business analyst, .NET developer, data analyst/engineer/scientist, DevOps engineer, network engineer, and full stack engineer, according to Dice. The region’s average tech salary is $100,341.

More broadly, the Greater Houston Partnership forecasts healthy job growth in 2023 while noting that a recession could temper the growth.

A “short and shallow” recession in the first half of 2023 would mean a net gain of 60,800 jobs next year, the partnership says. If no recession hits Houston, that number could climb as high as 79,200 jobs. However, a prolonged recession would limit job growth to about 30,400 jobs.

The partnership predicts 2023 job growth will be strongest in the region’s construction, energy, government, health care, professional services, and restaurant sectors. Within the professional category, which includes tech services, the partnership anticipates the addition of anywhere from 2,000 to 7,900 new jobs next year.

Through the first 10 months of this year, the Houston area added 144,000 new jobs, according to data from the Texas Workforce Commission. In November, the region’s unemployment rate stood at 4 percent, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier.

“As we look ahead to 2023 and what the future has in store, I’m incredibly optimistic about Houston’s prospects, despite a possible recession,” Bob Harvey, president of the partnership, says in a news release. “We have our challenges — from ensuring we lead on the energy transition to effectively competing for top talent — but each time Houston has been underestimated, we’ve come out on top. I believe that will be the case once again.”

Workers here earn their keep. Photo by Tom Werner/Getty Images

Hardworking Houston clocks in as top-10 U.S. labor market, report says

job juggernaut

Houston is proving its worth as a robust employment center.

A new report from Dallas-based ThinkWhy, a producer of talent intelligence software, ranks the Bayou City No. 8 overall in the top-performing labor markets in the country.

The Greater Houston area scored highly in net migration, job gain, and college degree holders, per ThinkWhy's LaborIQ Market Index.

Meanwhile, Houston is expected to fully recover jobs lost to the pandemic by 2023, the report adds.

Elsewhere in Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth clocks in as the No. 1 metro labor market, Austin comes in at No. 3, and San Antonio at No. 24. The most recent index is based on 10 key economic indicators from September for 150 metro areas.

"All four of Texas' major metros — which rank among the largest in the country — are expected to remain top-performing metros for an extended period. Due to the sheer size of these labor markets, their recovery will significantly impact the national economy," ThinkWhy says.

In August, Austin became one of the three largest metros — along with Salt Lake City and Phoenix — to recover all jobs lost to the pandemic, according to ThinkWhy. DFW and San Antonio are set to join those ranks 2022, with Houston expected to fully recover lost jobs in 2023.

"Retention of talent will be a major risk for businesses the remainder of this year," Jay Denton, chief labor market analyst at ThinkWhy, says in a news release. "With a record number of job openings, businesses are trying different methods to retain and attract employees, and compensation has been a critical part of that equation."

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Houston was recognized as a growing hub for tech jobs. Photo via VioletaStoimenova/Getty Images

Now hiring: Houston companies are looking to fill thousands of tech positions, according to a new report

by the numbers

Houston isn't stereotypically viewed as a tech hub like Silicon Valley or Austin. Yet the Houston metro area's tech employment base continues to grow at an impressive hub-type pace.

According to CompTIA, a trade group for the IT industry, employers in the Houston area posted openings for 14,714 tech jobs in the third quarter of 2021, up 44 percent from the same period last year. Through the first nine months of this year, Houston-area employers listed nearly 39,000 openings for tech positions.

CompTIA says Microsoft was the most active Houston-area employer last month in terms of postings for tech jobs — 130. It was followed by Deloitte (115) and JPMorgan Chase (52).

Among the most in-demand positions in the Houston area are software developer, software quality assurance analyst, computer user support specialist, computer systems analyst, and database administrator, CompTIA says.

A report released earlier this year by CompTIA ranks Houston as the country's No. 1 metro area for the share of tech workers employed at non-tech businesses — 62.2 percent (compared with 34.8 percent in the Austin metro area). According to the Greater Houston Partnership, this figure helps explain why Houston "isn't a more visible tech hub."

CompTIA tallied 243,908 tech workers in Houston last year, putting it in 11th place for total tech employment among U.S. metro areas. That compares with 426,286 in the San Francisco metro area (No. 4) and 373,695 in Dallas-Fort Worth (No. 11).

The ranks of tech workers in Houston are expanding in part because of an influx of tech talent. Among major metro areas, Houston claimed the No. 2 spot for the next gain of tech workers (10.4 percent compared with the previous 12-month span) moving from other regions from March 2019 to February 2020, according to LinkedIn data cited by the Axios news website. Only Miami ranked higher (15.4 percent).

While Houston may not necessarily be the next Silicon Valley, it "is winning the competition to establish tech hubs in Texas," MarketWatchdeclared in July.

The article cites the move of the headquarters for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) from Silicon Valley to Spring as an example of Houston's ascendance in the tech economy. The HPE relocation "offers a vivid snapshot of a new tech frontier," MarketWatch observes, where the energy sector, major local universities, the Texas Medical Center, Mayor Sylvester Turner's office, and the local tech ecosystem are collaborating on cloud computing and other innovations.

"I want the rest of the world to know how much Houston is changing," Amy Chronis, managing director of Deloitte's Houston office, told MarketWatch. "The wakeup call was Amazon looking at candidates for HQ2, and Houston not making the second cut. Not enough technological talent was their reason. It was incorrect, but it lit a fire here."

More full-time jobs are on the way to Houston. Photo by Edmond Dantès via Pexels

Houston leads U.S. with this aggressive strategy to lure top talent, says new survey

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

Many employers in Houston are ready to field new full-time employee applicants — and are ready to aggressively sweeten the deal.

New survey data from staffing firm Robert Half shows 50 percent of companies in Houston plan to add new full-time jobs in the second half of 2021. That's right on pace nationally; the number was 51 percent. Managers at companies with at least 20 employees participated in the survey.

Among the 28 U.S. cities in the Robert Half survey, those with the highest percentage of employers who expect to staff up this year are San Diego (62 percent), Dallas (61 percent), and Atlanta and Los Angeles (58 percent each).

Elsewhere in Texas, 51 percent of Austin employers plan to add new full-time jobs.

Meanwhile, Houston leads the nation in plans to lure top talent. To attract new workers, 56 percent of Houston employers surveyed by Robert Half indicate they're handing out signing bonuses, versus 53 percent in Austin and 52 percent in Dallas. The same figure across the 28 cities in the survey was 48 percent.

"Hiring is happening across the board, and competition for talent is intensifying. Simultaneously, job seekers are becoming more discerning when evaluating opportunities," Paul McDonald, senior executive director at Robert Half, says in a news release. "With these two forces at play, employers need to exceed candidates' expectations or risk losing them to better offers."

This hiring surge comes amid substantial workforce turnover this year triggered in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Seventy-five percent of Houston employers say they've experienced increased turnover this year, compared with 80 percent in Austin and 71 percent in Dallas. Nationally, the same number was 73 percent.

"Professionals with in-demand skills often have their pick of jobs," McDonald says. "To stand the best chance of winning over top candidates, employers need to modernize and minimize role requirements, move quickly, and make the most competitive offer possible from the start."

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

For better or for worse, automation is going to have an affect on specific jobs in Houston. Getty Images

New report identifies the Houston jobs that are most likely going to be affected by automation

the robots are coming

A new report from UpSkill Houston, a workforce initiative of the Greater Houston Partnership, puts the implications of workplace automation into stark focus. According to the report, more than 50 percent of middle-skill jobs in the Houston area face a higher-than-average risk of being upset by automation.

Peter Beard, who leads UpSkill Houston and is senior vice president for workforce development at the Greater Houston Partnership, says this means technology will "get embedded even more in the workplace than it's ever been before. … People's jobs will change because they have to work alongside technology. And there will be some jobs that get displaced because of that technology."

"Robots are coming," he adds, "but they're not going to replace us. We're going to have to figure out how to work beside them."

Middle-skill jobs require less than a four-year bachelor's degree but more than a high school diploma. In other words, jobs fitting into this middle ground might demand a two-year associate's degree or a training certificate from a technical school.

The report, released July 16, points out that middle-skill occupations in manufacturing and construction, for instance, face a high risk of disruption as companies adopt technologies that automate tasks, such as prefabrication of building materials. By contrast, the report notes, automation places jobs in the health care and service sectors in far less jeopardy because they generally rely on tasks that can't easily be automated. For example, jobs in health care often require social skills that can't be replicated through automation, which includes artificial intelligence, robotics, and machine learning.

However, jobs in health care aren't entirely immune from shifts in the workplace. The report indicates jobs in workforce segments like health care, sales and office support, IT, management, and drafting now require a medium or high level of digital skills.

That being said, all workers — regardless of their industry, occupation, or education — must embrace solid digital skills in order to succeed in the workforce, the report states. Beard says that to compete in today's workforce, a high school graduate must be proficient in Microsoft's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint programs as well as in a customer relationship management platform like Salesforce.

The findings in the UpSkill Houston report come at a pivotal time for the Houston economy, given the job-slashing double whammy of the coronavirus pandemic and the oil slump. The pandemic "has accelerated and accentuated a fundamental change that has been underway — a change in the education and skills needed to be successful in the workforce today and into the future," the report states.

That change poses particular challenges for low-skill and middle-skill workers in the Houston area, according to the report. The report recommends that workforce development stakeholders, including employers, schools, and community organizations, build a regional "framework" aimed at ramping up skillsets so workers can seize increasingly elevated career opportunities.

"It all starts with the employer. The employer is in the best position to know what skills they need today and what skills they are likely to need tomorrow," Beard says. "Fundamentally, we're trying to create a supply chain of talent that meets the needs of our economy and the needs of our employers."

But that takes employers collaborating with schools to ensure those skills are being taught, he says, and employers and schools motivating students to consider jobs that incorporate those skills.

Beard assigns those skills to four categories:

  • Technical skills
  • Digital skills
  • Soft skills, such as communication
  • Problem-solving skills

"This whole push we've had that everyone should go to college and get a four-year degree has made folks consider jobs that don't require a four-year college degree to be menial," Beard says. "That same mentality has also permeated the employers. How many job descriptions have we seen that put a four-year degree requirement on them but that don't require four years of college education?"

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Houston humanoid robotics startup inks new deal to deploy its rugged robots

big deal

Houston-based Persona AI announced the expansion of its operations at the Ion and a major milestone in deploying its humanoid robots.

The company will establish a state-of-the-art development center in the prominent corner suite on the first floor of the Ion, and is slated to begin expansion in June.

“We chose the Ion because it’s more than just a building — it’s a thriving innovation ecosystem,” CEO Nicolaus Radford said in a news release. “This is where Houston’s tech future is being built. It’s a convergence point for the people, energy, and ideas that power our mission to redefine human-machine collaboration. For an industrial, AI-driven robotics company, there’s no better place to scale than in the heart of Houston.”

Persona AI’s new development center will be located in the suite utilized by the Ion Prototyping Lab, managed by TXRX Labs. The IPL will transition its operations to the expanded TXRX facility in the East End Maker Hub, which will allow the lab to grow its team and meet increased demand.

At the start of the year, Persona AI closed $25 million in pre-seed funding. Earlier this month, the company announced a memorandum of understanding with HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, HD Hyundai Robotic, and Korean manufacturing firm Vazil Company to create and deploy humanoid robots for complex welding tasks in shipyards.

The project will deliver prototype humanoids by the end of 2026, with field testing and full commercial deployment scheduled to begin in 2027.

"As heavy industry faces growing labor constraints—especially in high-risk trades like welding—the need for rugged, autonomous humanoid robots is more urgent than ever,” Radford added in a separate statement. “This partnership with HD Hyundai and Vazil is more than symbolic—deploying to the shipyard is one of the largest real-world proving grounds for Persona's tough, humanoid robots.”

Houston climatech co. to lead one of world's largest carbon capture projects

Big Deal

Houston-based CO2 utilization company HYCO1 has signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia LNG Sdn. Bhd., a subsidiary of Petronas, for a carbon capture project in Malaysia, which includes potential utilization and conversion of 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

The project will be located in Bintulu in Sarawak, Malaysia, where Malaysia LNG is based, according to a news release. Malaysia LNG will supply HYCO1 with an initial 1 million tons per year of raw CO2 for 20 years starting no later than 2030. The CCU plant is expected to be completed by 2029.

"This is very exciting for all stakeholders, including HYCO1, MLNG, and Petronas, and will benefit all Malaysians," HYCO1 CEO Gregory Carr said in the release. "We approached Petronas and MLNG in the hopes of helping them solve their decarbonization needs, and we feel honored to collaborate with MLNG to meet their Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050.”

The project will convert CO2 into industrial-grade syngas (a versatile mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) using HYCO1’s proprietary CUBE Technology. According to the company, its CUBE technology converts nearly 100 percent of CO2 feed at commercial scale.

“Our revolutionary process and catalyst are game changers in decarbonization because not only do we prevent CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere, but we transform it into highly valuable and usable downstream products,” Carr added in the release.

As part of the MoU, the companies will conduct a feasibility study evaluating design alternatives to produce low-carbon syngas.

The companies say the project is expected to “become one of the largest CO2 utilization projects in history.”

HYCO1 also recently announced that it is providing syngas technology to UBE Corp.'s new EV electrolyte plant in New Orleans. Read more here.

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This story originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Texas tops ranking of best states for investors in new report

by the numbers

Texas ranks third on a new list of the best states for investors and startups.

Investment platform BrokerChooser weighed five factors to come up with its ranking:

  • 2024 Google search volume for terms related to investing
  • Number of investors
  • Number of businesses receiving investments in 2024
  • Total amount of capital invested in businesses in 2024
  • Percentage change in amount of investment from 2019 to 2024

Based on those figures, provided mostly by Crunchbase, Texas sits at No. 3 on the list, behind No. 1 California and No. 2 New York.

Especially noteworthy for Texas is its investment total for 2024: more than $164.5 billion. From 2019 to 2024, the state saw a 440 percent jump in business investments, according to BrokerChooser. The same percentages are 204 percent for California and 396 percent for New York.

“There is definitely development and diversification in the American investment landscape, with impressive growth in areas that used to fly under the radar,” says Adam Nasli, head analyst at BrokerChooser.

According to Crunchbase, funding for Texas startups is off to a strong start in 2025. In the first three months of this year, venture capital investors poured nearly $2.9 billion into Lone Star State companies, Crunchbase data shows. Crunchbase attributes that healthy dollar amount to “enthusiasm around cybersecurity, defense tech, robotics, and de-extincting mammoths.”

During the first quarter of this year, roughly two-thirds of VC funding in Texas went to just five companies, says Crunchbase. Those companies are Austin-based Apptronik, Austin-based Colossal Biosciences, Dallas-based Island, Austin-based NinjaOne, and Austin-based Saronic.

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