Houston Tops For RNs

Good news for health professionals: Houston ranked as the nation's best city for registered nurses

A new report has ranked Houston as the best U.S. city for registered nurses, where those professionals average the highest average salary in the country at $78,000 annually.

If you're a registered nurse living in Houston, then you've chosen the best city for your profession, according to a new report.

Austin-based blog Sparefoot recently released a list of the 10 best U.S. cities for registered nurses, and given Houston's strong ties to the medical industry, it's no surprise that the city came out on top.

To assess which cities were the best, the site teamed up with Indeed, the world's largest job site by users, to find the 10 metro areas with the most job listings for registered nurses, as well as the average salaries for those positions in each city. Sparefoot also aggregated the median rent and home prices based on 2013 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The site ranked each metro area by combining the rankings — they gave twice as much weight to job availability — to determine overall rankings.

The report found that Houston ranked first in every category, leading Sparefoot to say that the city is "hands-down the best metro area for registered nurses." The Houston metro made up the largest share of nursing jobs among the Top 10 at 14.6 percent. The city offers the highest average salary for registered nurses ($78,000), as well as a low median home price ($141,400) and median annual rent ($10,728).

All in all, four Texas cities were ranked on the list and all were included within the top 7. Dallas came in at No. 3 — right behind Tulsa at No. 2 — with registered nurses making an average salary of $71,000 and a median home price of $150,000. Additionally, San Antonio was ranked at No. 5 with an average salary of $62,000 and a median home price of $131,100, and Austin ranked No. 7 with an average salary of $65,000 and a median home price of $192,000.

The rest of the list included Seattle (No. 4), Los Angeles (No. 6), Baltimore (No. 8), Phoenix (No. 9) and San Diego (No. 10).

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Trucking news

Driverless truck company postpones route between Houston and Dallas

Photo courtesy of Aurora

Driverless semis traveling from Dallas to Houston were expected to launch this year.

Autonomous truck company Aurora Innovation says it won't start hauling freight without humans on board until April of 2025, a delay from previous statements that commercial service would begin by the end of 2024.

The Pittsburgh company said the April launch of driverless semis traveling from Dallas to Houston — originally announced last year — will be “modestly later” than the company had intended. The company also previously announced a partnership with Uber.

The company told investors on its third-quarter earnings conference call that it has made progress toward ensuring its trucks will operate safely.

Remaining obstacles are “primarily in the areas of some elements of surface street driving and some elements of construction that we see on the freeway,” CEO Chris Urmson said. “We want to have extremely high confidence in the system as we as we go forward.”

The company will start with about 10 autonomous tractor-trailers and move to “tens” of trucks by the end of next year, Urmson said.

“This shift to our timeline will have a negligible financial impact and does not affect our scaling efforts on our path to self-funding," Urmson said.

Aurora also intends to haul freight without human drivers from Fort Worth to Phoenix later in 2025, Urmson said.

Aurora in August added nearly $500 million to its balance sheet with a capital raise in August, which the company expects to fund the initial phases of its strategy to scale up driverless trucking.

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