Texas Led the Nation in Job Gains in 2025, and It Wasn’t Even Close

2025 was a wonderful year for job growth and development in the Lone Star State. In fact, Gov. Abbott's office released a celebratory statement announcing that Texas led the U.S. in job gains, easily outpacing the number two state by over 50,000 jobs.

What Are Nonfarm Jobs?

Texas added a whopping 132,500 nonfarm jobs last year. The term "nonfarm" means exactly what you'd think: jobs unrelated to farming and ranching. What you may not know is that it also includes private household employees and unpaid volunteers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The states following behind Texas in 2025 job gains happened to be North Carolina at 80,700 and Pennsylvania at 76,600.

Other Wins in Texas from 2025

Gov. Abbott's release highlighted additional wins related to job growth in 2025:

• Texas saw the largest labor force ever in the state's history at 15,964,000
• A new record was set for total working Texans, including those self-employed, at 15,283,600
• Total nonfarm jobs set a new high at 14,341,000 (19,700 in December alone)
• Texas unemployment rate (4.3%) fell just under the national rate of 4.4%

What Are the Unemployment Rates in other U.S States?

It may come as a surprise to some, but Hawaii and South Dakota had the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at 2.2% each. Want to take a guess at which state had the highest rate of unemployment in 2025? If you guessed Washington, D.C., congrats, you win nothing.

That's right, D.C. clocked an unemployment rate of 6.7% in 2025. The next highest states were California at 5.5% and New Jersey at 5.4%.

Washington, D.C. not only had the highest rate of unemployment in 2025, they also had a -4.2% job gain between December 2024 and December 2025, dropping from 772,200 jobs to 739,800.

The key takeaway here is that if Texas needed yet another win to brag about, we can now also say that we had the largest job gain in 2025. Go Texas!