Austin News

Although many western states are struggling to maintain jobs and to grow within the country's current economy, Texas is going against the grain and increasing its number of job offerings.

According to the Austin Business Journal, the Western Blue Chip Economic Forecasts indicated that the state of Texas had the second highest percent of change in terms of job growth over the past year.  In fact, when comparing this July to July of last year, the state saw a 2.4% increase in jobs created.  While the state's percentage increase was second in the nation, with Wyoming having a higher percentage increase at 2.5%, Texas actually had the largest number of new jobs added.  In fact, a total of 250,900 jobs were added in the state during that one year period of…

One of Austin's biggest companies, Dell, has pledged to increase the amount of money it gives to local, national and international causes.  In all, the company plans to give 1% more of its pre-tax profits to global charitable causes by February 2010.

According to the Austin Business Journal, the company wants to provide more support in the areas of education and digital inclusion efforts.  The company has determined that funding in these two areas is greatly needed in order to create a successful new tech era, which also means focusing on emerging countries where there is a greater need of providing educational opportunities focused around technology.

"The next billion Internet users coming online will largely live in emerging countries, such as Brazil,…

Austin takes pride in it focus on going green and its efforts have been paying off.  In fact, the Austin Business Journal reports that the city has been ranked as the 14th greenest city in the United States by the website SustainLane.com.  Not only did the city manage to land a high spot on the list, it also moved up one spot from the list put out by SustaineLane in 2006.

In order to rank the cities throughout the country, SustaineLane considered a number of different factors.  These included ranking the city's ability to maintain healthy drinking water and air as well as its public transit systems and parks.  The site also considered each city's sustainable local economy with green building, its renewable energy sources, its use of alternative…

Despite the touch economic times the nation is facing, Austin Business Journal reports that the Austin-Round Rock region is still managing to outperform other parts of the country when it comes to the creation of jobs as well as other economic markers.  The ranking, which was determined by the Milken Institute and Greenstreet Real Estate Partners, considers a variety of different factors when ranking cities throughout the country, including technology growth, job creation and salaries.

Receiving a fourth place ranking is certainly something for the city to be proud of, but it is particularly impressive when considering that the city placed 20th on the list last year.  Therefore, within just one year's time, the city has managed to gain 16 places on the

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City Trying to Determine the Fate of a Historical Building

The city of Austin is simply brimming with history, which is the reason why one Austin home is receiving so much attention.  The Detrick-Hamilton House, which is located at 912 E. 11th Street, once belonged to a freed slave and is being considered as the location for an African American cultural and heritage facility.  Unfortunately, part of the house is in disrepair and authorities are not certain how they will handle creating the new center – will parts of it be demolished or can they somehow be saved?  That is the big question that needs to be answered.

A $1.5 million bond referendum for the facility was approved by voters in November.  At the time, the vision was to use the house as a sort

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Although Austin recently received recognition for its use of solar power, the city still has some work to do when it comes to taking care of the environment.  According to a recent BizJournals.com article, the city is leaving a larger “carbon footprint” than ever before.

According to Wikipedia, a carbon footprint is defined as the “measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.”

While Austin has certainly taken some steps to try to reduce its footprint, the continual growth of the city has made it difficult to bring down the city’s total impact.  In fact, a study conducted by the Brookings Institution showed that the use of transportation and

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Despite the increasingly tough standards students in public schools are facing, Austin students are continuing to excel.  According to a recent article in the Statesman, students in nearly every grade showed improvement on their statewide standardized testing for the year.

The test, which is called the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, is given each year to all students in third grade through eleventh grade.  The exam covers math, reading, science, social studies, and writing and is meant to help measure student achievement from year to year.  In addition, in order to pass on to the next grade level, third graders have to pass the reading portion of the test.  Similarly, fifth graders and eighth graders have to pass the math and the reading

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A recent article in the Statesman demonstrates Austin’s commitment to creativity within the city.  According to the article, a new “Create Austin Cultural Master Plan” was recently presented to the City Council after completing two years of planning.

 

As part of the master plan, a private nonprofit alliance would be formed in order to provide a variety of services to the creative community in Austin, including offering legal services, insurance coverage, and marketing resources.  The plan also calls for consolidating the cultural functions of the city into one municipal department.

 

Developing the plan involved getting input from numerous private and public sector leaders.  They then developed the plan, which provides a ten year plan for

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Austin has been so successful at building up its economy that leaders from other parts of the nation are visiting the city in order to learn its secret to success.

On June 5th, a group of around 300 community and business leaders from Lexington, Kentucky visited the city to learn more about how the city is developing its economy.  The visit was arranged by Commerce Lexington Inc, which is a business and recruiting organization.  During the three day visit, these leaders met with Austin officials and take tours of key points of interest.  The purpose was to take a closer look at Austin’s successes as well as the challenges Austin has had to face in certain areas of development.

The Lexington leaders and officials were mostly interested in the success

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Although the nation is quite concerned about the possibility of a recession and despite the fact that many are struggling to keep or to find a job, the city of Austin appears to be doing white well.  In fact, according to a story published by Daily Texas Online, the overall availability of jobs in the Austin-Round Rock area has actually increased by 16,800 since last May. 

While the increase in employment opportunities is down when compared to the growth seen from May 2006 to May 2006 – which saw a 38,700 job increase – it is still encouraging to see that growth has taken place over the past year as well. 

In all, Travis County has seen an increase in employment opportunities each month.  According to the Texas Labor Market Review, the county has

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