Texas holds'em

For some reason, most media reports detailing 'where the jobs are' seem to omit mentioning the great state of Texas. (North Dakota has hogged all the headlines.) And it's true that certain factors -- a poorly educated and underinsured population, and high poverty and imprisonment rates -- make the argument for a potential move to the state a non-starter for many job seekers. But the current issue of The Economist sheds some positive light on the Lone Star.

Texas' unemployment rate is about 7% (as opposed to the national figure of 9.5%). Its government is not built on ledgers of red ink. Furthermore, the state is a veritable factory for big business: It hosts the headquarters of dozens of Fortune 500 companies (including American Airlines, CononcoPhillips, AT&T). Perhaps for this reason, in a Forbes tally of the U.S. cities that added the most jobs in the past 10 years, the first half of the Top 10 was composed entirely of Texan metropoli (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Austin). And maybe best of all, once you find a job there, you'll actually take home a larger percentage of your paycheck, since there's no personal income tax in the state. With some poetic license, you can translate all this as: Find a job in Texas, and you can spend more money on barbecue and beer...

--Posted by Todd Obolsky, Vault Staff Writer