How Fort Worth supplanted Austin as Texas’ top boomtown

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Fort Worth may soon become the state’s next city with more than 1 million people.

Fort Worth had nearly 990,000 residents as of January 2024, according to recent estimates from the Texas Demographic Center — just barely surpassing Austin to become the state’s fourth-largest city.

Fort Worth has grown faster than any other major Texas city since 2020 as the city added tens of thousands of jobs. The city’s relatively low home prices and rents, laidback Western vibe, cultural offerings like the city’s museum district and proximity to the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers make it an attractive destination for newcomers and contributed to its growth, observers said.

“Fort Worth is on a roll,” said Cullum Clark, director of the George W. Bush Institute’s Economic Growth Initiative at Southern Methodist University. “When you visit, it's pretty clear that it's a place that is booming, where people are very excited about the direction of things.”

With growth comes challenges. Fort Worth’s housing is more affordable than in many other large cities. But that affordability has waned amid the city’s population boom. It’s now more expensive to rent in the North Texas city than in Austin, which has historically not been the case.

Fort Worth added nearly 71,000 residents from 2020 to 2024, both growing at a faster pace and adding more residents than any other major Texas city. In second place was San Antonio, which grew by more than 62,000 residents in that time frame.

Houston remains the state’s largest city with more than 2.3 million. Its population barely budged. Dallas also barely added new residents in that time frame. El Paso shrank by more than 6,000 residents.

Austin grew in recent years but not as quickly as Fort Worth. Amid the capital city’s pandemic-era run-up in housing costs and layoffs in the tech sector, Travis County saw more residents last year move out than in.

“It's more difficult to move around there, it's more expensive to do things, it's more expensive to buy housing there,” said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer. “You don't see costs being quite as prohibitive (in Fort Worth) as what we're seeing in Austin.”

The Austin region is growing at a quicker clip than the Dallas-Fort Worth region, Potter noted. International migration to Travis County fueled population growth there in recent years, Potter said. Suburban cities like Georgetown, Leander and Round Rock as well as smaller towns like Liberty Hill have also added tens of thousands of residents since 2020, data from the center shows.

Tthe Dallas-Fort Worth region added more total residents than the Austin region between 2020 and 2024, the demographic center’s data show — a staggering 546,000 residents. The greater Houston region came in second, growing by about 392,000 people in that same period.

Strong job growth in the region undergirds Fort Worth’s population boom, experts said. The Fort Worth-Arlington region has added more than 95,000 jobs in the last three years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fort Worth has long been an aerospace and defense hub — home to American Airlines; Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, which manufactures the F-35 fighter jet; and Bell Textron, a builder of military and commercial helicopters. Last month, Bell announced a $632 million plant to build parts for the company’s new assault helicopter, slated to add more than 500 jobs. It’s also home to the eye care company Alcon Laboratories and BNSF Railway, one of the nation’s largest freight rail operators.

Trade, transportation, and utilities saw the strongest job growth over the last year in the Fort Worth-Arlington region, according to recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The region also saw gains in jobs in construction; education and health services; and leisure and hospitality.

“What it shows is that you can experience enormous growth when you become one of the best places in America to operate some of these older industries,” Clark said.

Fort Worth boosters hope a higher education boom will help supply educated workers to attract future employers. Texas Christian University, the city’s preeminent higher education institution, and Texas A&M University are each expanding there. And the University of Texas at Arlington is building a new branch in West Fort Worth.

“I am very bullish on our higher education institutions and the growth that they are going to bring to Fort Worth,” Robert Allen, who heads the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership, said. “That's huge because that continues to turn out talent and make sure that talent pipeline is robust, which is obviously a key critical component to continue that growth.”

Like nearly every other major city, Fort Worth’s housing affordability has slipped amid its boom. But it remains more affordable than many of the country’s largest cities.

Asking rents are 30% higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, Zillow data show. Among the state’s largest cities, Fort Worth had the highest rents toward the end of last year — surpassing even Austin, where rents have fallen for 19 straight months amid a massive apartment building boom. The Fort Worth area, meanwhile, has permitted roughly the same amount of housing units as it did before the pandemic.

Buying a home in Fort Worth is also more expensive than it used to be. The typical sales price of a home sat at $340,000 last November, about 48% higher than in the same month in 2019. It’s cheaper to purchase a home in San Antonio or El Paso than in Fort Worth, though not as expensive as in neighboring Dallas or Austin — where the typical home now goes for more than half a million dollars. Homes are cheaper in Fort Worth than in many neighboring suburbs.

“Fort Worth is a dramatically more affordable place to live,” Clark said.

Disclosure: BNSF Railway Company, George W. Bush Institute, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M University, Texas Christian University and University of Texas - Arlington have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.