City Of Fort Worth: Tarrant County's New Firms Added About 30,000 Jobs

Press release from City of Fort Worth:

November 19, 2021

Startup businesses created an estimated 30,000 jobs in Tarrant County in 2019, according to a new report commissioned by the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

These new firms, which are less than a year old, helped Tarrant County keep pace in job creation when compared to neighboring counties and other large counties in Texas, according to the report, Sparkyard Fall 2021 Jobs Report. 

Sparkyard is a program operated by the University of North Texas Health Science Center (HSC), with support from the City of Fort Worth Economic Development Department and TCU Neeley School of Business.

“We know that at a national level almost all net new job creation comes from young firms,” said Dr. Robert McClain, associate vice president of HSC’s Division of Research and Innovation. “Though this seems like a very large number, it shouldn’t surprise us that new companies create this many jobs each year.”

The jobs created paid almost $37,000 a year in wages, on average.

“It is our hope that this research shows our local policymakers and business leaders the importance of local startup activity to our economy,” McClain said. “We hope that information like this will help lead to better decisions about incentives and economic development decision making.”

This is the second year that HSC released a jobs report. The inaugural report, released in 2018, determined that new firms accounted for more than an estimated 25,000 jobs created.

The Fall 2021 Jobs Report was released during this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week Fort Worth, at Fort Worth’s State of Entrepreneurship event. The 2021 report found that firms 0-1 years old created nearly 30,000 jobs in 2019. The 2021 report also revised the 2018 figure up to nearly 28,000 jobs created by new firms, fueled largely by the region’s population growth.

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This press release was produced by City of Fort Worth. The views expressed here are the author’s own.