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About Houston
Business Overview
Houston has not evolved into Texas' biggest City (and the largest in the South) by accident. Known as the Bayou City for its waterway system, Houston thrives because it is a great place to work and a great place to live.
For business and fun, for living and visiting, Houston is one of the dynamic frontiers on the world stage. With its proximity to the Southern Hemisphere and having the infrastructure to accommodate the growing needs of numerous global interests, Houston has become an international destination and one of the world's great cities.
As a major corporate center. Houston is home to 23 Fortune 500 companies.
The Port of Houston, one of the region's greatest assets, ranks as the nation's largest port in international tonnage and second in total tonnage.
Houston's infrastructure is also strengthened by three airports, which form the sixth-largest airport system in the world, and a massive trucking and rail system that links the southern, south central, midwestern and western United States. More than 600 trucking firms operate in Houston, and two major rail systems operate 14 mainline tracks radiating from Houston.
Houston's employment base has become increasingly diverse. In 1981, the economic base was dominated by energy-related businesses with nearly 85 percent of all jobs in those sectors. Today nearly half of all jobs are in non-energy fields, such as business services, technology, aerospace, medicine and manufacturing.
Houston offers a richly-diverse pool of highly-skilled, multilingual, multicultural workers. Nearly 25 percent of all adults have completed four years of college, surpassing the national average, while the median age is three years younger than the national average. More than 90 languages are spoken in Houston.
The City of Houston offers a wide range of incentive programs to encourage business and industry to choose Houston when making expansion or relocation decisions, such as:
Tax Abatement Programs | Enterprise Zones | Enterprise Zones | Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones
beginning at www.houstontx.gov/ecodev.