TEXAS — It’s no secret that business is booming in Texas.

According to the Texas Workforce Commission, Texas reached an all-time high with the largest labor force ever in the state’s history.

An economy expert believes it’s the tech and finance companies flocking here to hire Texans.

“Texas created over 168,000 jobs last year, more than any other state,” said William Chittenden, who is the president and CEO of Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business.

 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Texas Workforce Commission, over 15 million Texans are working for a company or are self-employed. This is the largest labor force in the state’s history. 

“Why are people moving to Texas? Because there’s great job opportunities here. And why are there great job opportunities in Texas? Well, because businesses know if they go to Texas, they’ve got lots of well-educated folks that they’ll be able to hire,” said Chittenden.

This is all despite massive layoffs this year, especially in North Texas. In the past year, more than 10,000 people lost their jobs in North Texas.

Despite that, Chittenden said there are more job opportunities than job loss.

“We’ve seen the federal workforce shrink, and, you know, we’ve got a lot of federal jobs in Texas. We’ve also seen an increase in technology-related jobs. So we have lots of data centers going into Texas. A lot of things driving development in AI. And so that more than offsets any of the other areas where we’ve seen some declines,” he explained.

Texas’ unemployment rate has held steady at 4.1%, which is below the U.S. unemployment rate at 4.4%.

Gov. Greg Abbott, along with Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, celebrated Texas’ job growth while announcing that Southwest Airlines will create another 2,000 jobs in Austin.

“We are the home of more economic opportunity for our fellow Texans than any other state in the United States of America,” said Abbott.

According to the Texas Workforce Commission, the Dallas-Fort Worth area gained the most jobs in the state with over 30,000 jobs added within the last year.