NUMBER OF THE DAY
Who needs SXSW? Austin’s Stunning Covid Comeback
Business relocations to the Texas capital spur job growth
10,000: That’s how many new jobs the businesses that relocated to Austin, Texas, this year are expected to bring to the city, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That figure was estimated before software company Oracle announced on Friday that it was shifting its headquarters from Silicon Valley to the Texas capital. Earlier last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also announced his move to Austin, following an earlier announcement that Tesla would build a factory outside the city. Tesla and other companies like Royal Dutch Shell and venture capital firm 8VC have been drawn by Texas’s low taxes, good year-round weather, affordable housing, and plentiful supply of qualified graduates from the University of Texas, Austin.
Austin began to emerge as an attractive destination for businesses a few years ago, but the beginning of the pandemic brought the city’s future into question. Back in July, Adam Bluestein wrote for Marker about how the cancellation of South by Southwest, Austin’s annual tech and music festival, was an “Exxon Valdez-scale disaster” for the city, depriving it of one of its biggest draws. Still, the city seemed to maintain an undercurrent of youthful…
