The unemployment rate in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area was nearly unchanged at the end of 2025 compared to a year earlier.
Still, the region’s unemployment situation fared better than the U.S. and Texas more broadly, a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed.
The non-seasonally adjusted jobless rate for D-FW in December was 3.6%, compared to 3.5% in December 2024. At the end of 2025, roughly 166,00 area residents were unemployed, out of a labor force of roughly 4.56 million; a year earlier, about 158,000 North Texans were unemployed out of a labor force of around 4.53 million.
The nearly flat year-over-year trend for the Metroplex meant that D-FW’s labor market continued to be somewhat tighter than those of both the U.S. and Texas. Nationally, unemployment moved from 3.8% in December 2024 to 4.1% in December 2025 on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, while Texas saw unemployment move from 3.7% to 3.9%, according to the BLS report.
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The updated metro unemployment data comes as the state is projected to once again add jobs this year after a virtually flat 2025, although at a rate that’s still well below Texas’ historically high growth trend.
On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that the country added 130,000 jobs in January — significantly more than expected — while the national seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3%. In December, the seasonally adjusted rate was 4.4%.
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This year, the Dallas Fed has projected Texas will add jobs at a rate of 1.1%, with gains continuing to come from data center construction, and an expected additional economic boost from the World Cup.
“It’s not back to trend growth. I’m not sure — I don’t think that trend growth really is achievable given the labor supply constraints that we’re experiencing right now,” Pia Orrenius, a Dallas Fed economist, said last week.
“So I think 1% is a good goal, and that’s still a pretty good outlook for this year.”
The labor supply constraints come largely from drops in immigration to the state stemming from the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown and restrictive policies, economists say.
Another report from the Dallas Fed, published in October, found that the new immigration policies were negatively impacting hiring or retention at one in five Texas businesses, with the service sector and larger firms particularly impacted.
Nationally, the January jobs surge came largely from private education and healthcare; those sectors have also been growing in Texas, although last year the state’s construction industry added jobs at a faster pace, according to BLS and Texas Workforce Commission data.
Last year Texas also lost a significant number of jobs in the oil and gas, information and manufacturing sectors, for an overall net gain of less than 11,000 jobs, or about 0.1%, according to the Dallas Fed.
Jobs still bloom in the area
North Texas — which has ranked for years among the country’s fastest growing metro areas, adding both people and companies at a fast clip — has remained an attractive region for corporate relocations.
In September, Scotiabank, one of Canada’s largest banks, confirmed it would set up a new regional headquarters in Victory Park after the city of Dallas approved an incentives package, a move the city has said will bring over 1,000 local jobs. The bank has already moved in a contingent of workers ahead of an official opening that will take place later in February.
And last month, the insurance giant Geico, a company founded in Fort Worth, also announced it was leasing another building in Richardson as part of a broader North Texas expansion that it says has now brought more than 2,500 jobs in just over a year.
In recent months the region has also seen multiple companies, including UPS, Dillard’s and Texas Instruments, introduce significant layoffs.
The 3.6% December unemployment rate for the D-FW Metroplex was roughly in line with other large Texas metro areas. Greater Austin, with an unemployment rate of 3.2%, fared slightly better, although the Houston, San Antonio and El Paso metro areas all fared worse, with jobless rates of 4.2%, 3.7% and 4.1%, respectively.