Other cities' struggles highlight North Texas' appeal

By Cheryl Hall
Business Columnist

Economist Michael Cox has a slogan to suggest if you're trying to attract talented workers from either coast: Move here and get a free BMW.

It's not false advertising, says the former chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who's now at ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Methodist University.

Most professionals working in the Northeast and California pay the equivalent of a year's worth of expensive car payments in annual personal income tax – which we don't have.

But we don't need an ad campaign to encourage immigration to North Texas.

Every year for the last three years, Dallas-Fort Worth has added a Little Rock to our population, Cox says. Maintain that annual increase of 165,000 for three years, and we will have "annexed" a San Jose, Calif., since 2007.

"Every six years, we add a million people," says Cox, who heads the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. "That's unbelievable. When they lose their jobs in Cleveland, they say, 'OK, let's pack up and move to Dallas.' "

If population trends continue, we'll replace Chicago as the third-largest metropolitan area in 20 years, if not sooner, Cox says.

Why here? Why now?

"The world has fallen in our lap," he says. "We're a service-based economy. We're perfectly poised for growth domestically. Now we have global growth through technology that enables us to be the 'it' economy."

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