An emerging tech hub? North Texas ranks among country's hottest metros for tech job postings, report shows
North Texas' economy may have lately become best known for its yearslong finance industry surge, but the region also continues emerging as a formidable tech hub, a new analysis of workforce and Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggests.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area counted nearly 11,000 tech-related job postings last month, the third-most among all U.S. metro areas, the analysis from the IT company CompTIA showed. D-FW also had around 270 more tech job postings compared with a month earlier, the sixth-highest increase among metro areas.
The tech-related postings don't translate perfectly into job gains - not all postings will be filled, and the data doesn't capture tech jobs being eliminated or reclassified - but the postings, which were also up around the country, do offer a strong indication of where employment in the sector is headed, said Seth Robinson, vice president of industry research at CompTIA.
And in North Texas, the recent acceleration in postings comes after years of growth for the local tech workforce, a trend that's also tied to the region's larger corporate boom story.
"These tech jobs are popping up in a wide variety of industries - it's not just in the high-tech industry," said Robinson. "So I think that really benefits a city like Dallas that's diversified. It's got a high population, and it's got a concentration in an area that might lean a little more heavily in technology."
The country's broad AI transformation and digital transformation, two macro trends that have been driving up tech postings recently, could also end up leading to more tech jobs in greater Dallas, a region that's less obviously tech-heavy than cities like San Jose or Boston but does see a rising tech demand through its growing professional services sector and concentration of corporate headquarters, Robinson added.
"It's really going to be one of the cities probably at the forefront of those two activities," he said.
CompTIA, a Chicago-area company that issues tech occupation certifications to workers around the world, issues monthly and annual reports on the U.S. tech workforce based on its reviews of data from Lightcast, a labor market data company, and the BLS. The company's latest monthly tech jobs report was published in early June and included data from the federal agency's May jobs report.
That jobs report, released last Friday, was unexpectedly strong. It showed that in May U.S. employers added a net of 172,000 nonfarm jobs, more than twice as many as analysts had been predicting. The bureau also revised March and April employment figures upward by 93,000 jobs combined, while the national unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%.
The surprising jobs gains - which come as the country, and D-FW, are still broadly experiencing what analysts have dubbed a "low-hire, low-fire" economy - were led by the leisure and hospitality and healthcare industries and the local government sector, which combined added 160,000 jobs.
On net, the month was also positive for tech workers: Across the U.S., the number of tech professionals working in all industries increased by 69,000 workers, according to CompTIA's analysis, while the tech industry added 6,700 jobs.
Those gains came even as some of the world's biggest tech companies - most notably Meta - implemented wide-scale layoffs as part of a larger pivot to AI. The transformative technology has already reduced the need for workers at some Texas firms, according to a recent survey of manufacturing and service sector executives by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and has also fueled wider fears about its future impact on American workers.
"I think the big question in terms of the labor market is, 'Is AI automating or augmenting workers? ' Emily Kerr, a senior business economist at the Dallas Fed, recently told The News. "Is it replacing or enhancing workers?' ... And from our survey over the past couple of years, as we've been asking about this, the answer continues to be both.'
Yet the country's broader tech workforce picture, Robinson said, has lately turned rosier, as more companies - especially small- and medium-sized businesses - continue to demand higher tech knowledge as they become more automated and in many cases begin adopting AI.
"All of those things, together, outweigh whatever is happening at these large bellwethers of the technology industry," he said.
The uptick comes after a mostly flat 2025. At the beginning of last year, according to CompTIA's analyses, the U.S. tech industry, including tech workers and non-technical workers such as marketing or sales employees, employed 5.35 million workers, a number that dipped to 5.28 million by the end of the year. The number of tech workers across all sectors also dropped, from 6.72 million to 6.63 million.
But this year, while the number of tech industry employees has essentially remained flat, the number of tech employees across all industries has risen by around 270,000 workers. Job postings across the country for tech occupations have also been rising, and listings that mention AI skill requirements have shot up dramatically.
That trend continued last month, which saw around 269,000 new job postings, about 4,000 more new postings than in April, with the listings indicating the highest demand for roles that include software developers and engineers, tech support specialists and cybersecurity engineers.
D-FW, with nearly 11,000 tech job postings last month, ranked behind only New York and Washington, D.C., which counted around 19,000 and 17,000, respectively. North Texas also had about 1,000 tech job postings from the finance sector, a number that was second only to New York, and around 2,300 postings for remote tech roles, a figure that ranked behind only New York and Washington, D.C.
The local postings only add more workforce volume to what's already become one of the country's largest tech hubs: As of last year, according to CompTIA's 2026 annual report, D-FW counted a total of 377,00 people working either as tech workers or in the tech industry - a number that ranked behind only New York among U.S. metro areas. For 2026, the IT company also projected D-FW would have 232,000 tech workers across all industries, behind only New York and Washington, D.C. and ahead of Los Angeles and San Francisco. (Comptia's report counted San Francisco and San Jose as separate metro areas.)
The report also estimated that the tech sector had a nearly $90 billion impact on the D-FW economy, and that tech workers constituted nearly 9% of the area workforce. "Not as high as something that you'd see in Austin or San Francisco" - two metro areas where tech workers represent 13% of the workforce - "but a relatively high percent," Robinson noted.
Another recent report, from the commercial real estate giant CBRE, which used 2024 data, ranked D-FW's overall tech workforce slightly lower, as the fifth largest among U.S. metro areas, but its second fastest growing. Dallas was also recently named the world's number one primary data center market. The regional economy's underlying makeup - including its growing presence as a finance and professional services hub - means the local tech postings are likely to keep coming, Robinson said.
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This story was originally published June 12, 2026 at 8:10 AM.