Inside Information

There is a secret Briefing Room in the new Apple Store in Highland Village: Nopictures allowed in second-floor perch

The new Apple Store in Highland Village looks distinctive on the outside, butit's the secret Briefing Room that really helps set it apart.
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchLightGroup.com
The Briefing Room is on the second floor and it's a completely differentatmosphere than found in the first floor din.
Photo by © Michelle Watson/CatchLightGroup.com

Any shopper or passerby can see that the Highland Village Apple Store retail floor is remarkable looking, but most haven't seen the hidden Briefing Room — perhaps the most unique aspect of the 9,000 square foot space.

Out of 363 Apple retail stores worldwide, the new freestanding Houston store is just the 14th to boast a room especially dedicated to customers with business needs, and the second in Texas (the store on Knox Street in Dallas re-opened with an expanded retail space and a Briefing Room last November).

Exiting the elevator on the second floor, you enter a small but sleek lobby that drastically differs from the noisy, open-air space downstairs.

The exclusive spot, accessed via a two-sided elevator against the western wall of the building, extends above neighboring Sprinkles Cupcakes and Paper Source. Apple does not allow pictures of the Briefing Room, an indication of how seriously the bigwigs in Cupertino, Calif. take maintaining the mystique and exclusive feel.

CultureMap was allowed inside for a look around though.

Exiting the elevator on the second floor, you enter a small but sleek lobby that drastically differs from the noisy, open-air space downstairs. That's the point: Through the glass doors, in a quiet room, the Apple business team can conduct scheduled and impromptu business customer briefings, give business workshops and host app spotlights, networking events and training programs, without the distraction of shoppers.

Outfitted with a 12-seat conference table of the same blonde wood used downstairs, equipped with iMacs and laptops, wall-mounted monitors and lights controlled by an iPad, it is an outlet to showcase Apple products and a visible indication that Apple is serious about helping customers integrate them into businesses.

Though Apple selected the Highland Village store for the location, the briefing room is a market facility, meaning that all of the seven Houston-area stores can reserve the briefing room for meetings with business customers.

Keep updated on the schedule of workshops and events on the store's website; a briefcase icon indicates business-specific events.

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Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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