Cha-ching

22 Houston companies cash in on new Fortune 500 ranking

The Bayou City claims the second most Fortune 500 companies in Texas.

Tomasz Zajda/EyeEm/Getty Images

The Fortune 500 has released its annual ranking of the country's most profitable companies, and the business-friendly Lone Star State makes another impressive showing.

Now back for its 66th year, the Fortune 500 is ranked according to total company revenue for the last fiscal year (in this case 2019), while calculating profits, return to investors, number of employees, assets, and earnings per share.

But, of course, it all comes down to the money. According to a release, these companies represent a mind-boggling two-thirds of the U.S. gross domestic product, with $14.2 trillion in revenues, a 4 percent leap over last year. The revenue threshold to even make this year's Fortune 500 list was $5.7 billion, the magazine notes.

In total, Texas has the third most companies on the list with 50, just behind California and New York, with 53 spots each. And though it always stings to be just behind California when it comes to business, Texas does claim the most spots among the top 10.

Irving-based Exxon Mobil takes the highest spot among Texas companies at No. 3, followed by medical supply and pharmaceutical company McKesson, also headquartered in Irving, at No. 8. Telecommunications giant AT&T, which calls nearby Dallas home, ranks No. 9.

Houston
The Bayou City claims the second most Fortune 500 companies in Texas, largely in the energy and oil sectors. Twenty-two Fortune 500 companies call Houston or The Woodlands home, including:

Phillips 66 (No. 27)
Sysco (No. 56)
ConocoPhillips (No. 93)
Plains GP Holdings (No. 98)
Enterprise Products (No. 101)
Baker Hughes (No. 129)
Halliburton (No. 142)
Occidental Petroleum (No. 148)
EOG Resources (No. 186)
Waste Management (No. 207)
Kinder Morgan (No. 242)
Center Point Energy (No. 260)
Quanta Services (No. 261)
Group 1 Automotive (No. 264)
Calpine (No. 319)
Cheniere Energy (No. 329)
Targa Resources (No. 365)
National Oilwell Varco (No. 374)
Huntsman (No. 382)
Westlake Chemical (No. 391)
Apache (No. 465)
Crown Castle (No. 496)

Dallas-Fort Worth
Along with claiming three companies in the top 10, Dallas-Fort Worth is home to 23 Fortune 500 companies, the most of any Texas metro. As a result, Dallas also claims the second most revenue of any city in the U.S.

The Fortune 500 companies located in the greater Dallas area include:

Energy Transfer (No. 59)
American Airlines Group (No. 70)
Southwest Airlines (No. 141)
Tenet Healthcare (No. 174)
Kimberly-Clark (No. 175)
Fluor (No. 181)
D.R. Horton (No. 183)
HollyFrontier (No. 184)
Jacobs Engineering (No. 206)
Texas Instruments (No. 222)
Core-Mark Holding (No. 240)
Vistra Energy (No. 270)
J.C. Penney ( No. 286)
Pioneer Natural (No. 341)
Yum China Holdings (No. 361)
Dean Foods (No. 421)
Builders FirstSource (No. 425)
GameStop (No. 464)
Celanese (No. 470)
EnLink Midstream (No. 483)
Commercial Metals (No. 491)

Austin
Austin doesn't technically have any spots in the top 10, but it does have two prominent area employers. Amazon, owner of Whole Foods Market, comes in at No. 2, and Apple follows at No. 4. Though based in Cupertino, California, the computer giant is currently building a $1 billion second headquarters in Austin. Once open, the corporation should add 5,000 new jobs in the Capital City, making it one of the region's largest employers.

Along with Amazon and Apple, the Austin area claims one other spot on the Fortune 500 list. Round Rock-based Dell earned $4.6 billion in profits, giving it the No. 34 spot.

San Antonio

Coming in third among Texas' biggest metro areas is San Antonio with three companies on the Fortune 500 list. Though Valero Energy had a rough 2019 and is on track for an even rougher 2020, its revenues surpassed a trillion dollars, and its net income was still $2.4 billion, enough to take the No. 32 spot.

Employee favorite USAA, which also landed on Fortune's 100 Best Places to Work list in February, ranks No. 94 — its highest spot ever on the Fortune 500 list. As Fortune notes, "USAA provides banking and insurance offerings to U.S. military members and their families; it routinely scores at the top of customer-satisfaction surveys in an industry that isn't generally beloved by consumers."

And New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises, a company that specializes in commercial vehicle sales, parks itself at No. 492.

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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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