One of the most common reasons people give for moving from one city to the other is searching for employment. Perhaps they had good jobs at a plant that made Allis Chalmers water pumps and were then let go when the factory moved overseas, or maybe they were passed over for promotion. Regardless, moving to a new city is a way to start over, with a new (hopefully better) job and a new life. If you're moving to Austin, Texas to look for work, this article will give you an overview of Austin's largest industries and the jobs you might be able to find there.

On the whole, Austin is a good place to choose if you're looking for work. The unemployment rate is only 6.5% in Austin, compared to 8.1% for the state of Texas and around 10% for the United States. The city has experienced some job loss since 2000, but not enough to send highly qualified people scrambling for jobs doing manure handling. In 2003 the city launched its campaign to increase the number of jobs in Austin and over the span of five years they pledged to add 72,000 new jobs to the city's store. Austin is a city that is very interested in its citizens' economic well being.

Though the city does of course have many industries at work, including construction, manufacturing of drive pulleys and such, health care, and tourism, the largest employment sector is high technology. The city has a very young, highly educated workforce that has attracted companies like Dell, 3M, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple computers in to set up shop. As a result of all this activity in the technology field, Business 2.0 magazine has rated Austin one of the biggest Boom Towns on its 2004 list of cities with increasing economic clout.

A large part of the city's high tech industry can be attributed to the fact that there's an abundance of post-secondary education in the area, which means that Austin is not only a good choice for people with experience doing search engine optimization in Toronto but also for college professors and teachers. The University of Texas at Austin is the largest such institution, but there are also seven others in the city and more than fifty within a few hundred miles. In fact, there are so many schools in the area that Austin was voted the #1 College Town by the Travel Channel.

If you're looking for a job in Austin, you can always look in the paper or online for ads soliciting people with experience installing industrial insulation, or you can job shop at Austin's largest employers with a copy of your resume. Austin's largest employers include the Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Dell Incorporated, the Federal Government, Freescale Semiconductors, and St. David's Healthcare.