For the Kids

Texas Children's Hospital reveals first look at $485 million Austin campus

The campus will open in early 2024.

Rendering courtesy of TCH and Page

Texas Children's Hospital is working on its first freestanding location in Austin — and the hospital system just released a first glance at what the state-of-the-art building will look like.

The new Texas Children's Austin campus — to be located at 9835 North Lake Creek Pkwy. — will be open in the first quarter of 2024, according to a news release. The $485 million project is expected to break ground this spring.

The 365,000-square-foot, 52-bed hospital will serve women and children and include neonatal and pediatric intensive care units, operating rooms, epilepsy monitoring, sleep center, emergency center, fetal center for advanced fetal interventions and fetal surgery, diagnostic imaging, acute care, and an onsite Texas Children's Urgent Care location, per the release.

The location will have an adjacent 170,000-square-foot outpatient building — for subspecialties such as cardiology, oncology, neurology, pulmonology, fetal care, and more — and over 1,200 free parking spaces.

The project was originally announced in May of 2020. The general contractor is St. Louis, Missouri-based McCarthy Building Companies, which has an office in Houston and Austin, and the architecture and engineering firm is Houston-based Page.

"At Texas Children's, our breadth and depth of expertise allows us to provide the full spectrum of health care services which we believe helps improve the overall health and well-being of Austin children, women, and families," says Michelle Riley-Brown, executive vice president at Texas Children's, in the original announcement. "Our promise to Austin remains strong – to deliver specialized care closer to you through our multiple locations across the city so children and women can access the right care, in the right place, at the right time."

Houston-based Texas Children's first entered the Austin market in March of 2018 with the opening of Texas Children's Urgent Care Westgate at 4477 South Lamar Blvd. Later that year, TCH opened Texas Children's Specialty Care Austin at 8611 N. MoPac, suite 300. Texas Children's Pediatrics currently has 10 locations in Austin.

"Texas Children's came from humble beginnings, opening in 1954 with a 106-bed pediatric hospital. From there, we grew into the preeminent hospital we are today, delivering the highest quality care possible by serving the needs of the children of Texas and beyond," says TCH's president and CEO, Mark A. Wallace, in the original release.

"Texas Children's, like Austinites, dwell in possibilities. Every facet of our new hospital will be designed, engineered and tailored with your family's needs and desired experience."

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This story originally appeared on our sister site InnovationMap.com.

The campus will open in early 2024.

Texas Children's Hospital Austin rendering

Rendering courtesy of TCH and Page

The campus will open in early 2024.

health

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.

job market texas wallethub jobs