If you’re looking for a job in Austin, Texas, we’ve got you covered.

Austin is one of the top 10 cities in the United States for jobs in a number of sectors, including Information Technology, Automotive Manufacturing and Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering. Not only that, but Austin has been ranked as one of the top cities in the nation for job growth over the past decade.

The most prevalent industries in Austin are Information Technology and Aerospace Engineering. These two industries alone employ more than 11% of Austin’s workforce. In fact, they have been growing at such a rapid pace that they have accounted for nearly half of all new jobs created since 2010!

If you’re looking to get a foot in the door in either of these fields—or any other industry—then we’ve got exactly what you need. We have compiled an extensive list of entry-level jobs available right now across multiple industries and will be adding more listings regularly so keep checking back often!

Austin Entry Level Jobs

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most populous city in the United States,^[7] the fourth-most-populous city in Texas, the second-most-populous state capital city, one of two state capitals with a population of over one million people,^[8] after Phoenix, Arizona,^[9][10] and the most populous state capital that is not also the most populous city in its state.^[9] It has been one of the fastest growing large cities in the United States since 2010.^[11][12][13] Downtown Austin and Downtown San Antonio are approximately 80 miles (129 km) apart, and both fall along the Interstate 35 corridor. Some observers believe that the two regions may some day form a new “metroplex” similar to Dallas and Fort Worth.^[14][15] Austin is the southernmost state capital in the contiguous United States and is considered a “Beta −” global city as categorized by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.^[16]

As of 2022, Austin had an estimated population of 1,028,225,^{[3][unreliable source?]} up from 961,855 at the 2020 census. The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,295,303 as of July 1, 2020, a roughly 84% increase from the year 2000.^[17] Located in Central Texas within the greater Texas Hill Country, it is home to numerous lakes, rivers, and waterways, including Lady Bird Lake and Lake Travis on the Colorado River, Barton Springs, McKinney Falls, and Lake Walter E. Long.

Residents of Austin are known as Austinites.^[18] They include a diverse mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, digital marketers, and blue-collar workers. The city’s official slogan promotes Austin as “The Live Music Capital of the World”, a reference to the city’s many musicians and live music venues, as well as the long-running PBS TV concert series Austin City Limits.^[19][20] The city also adopted “Silicon Hills” as a nickname in the 1990s due to a rapid influx of technology and development companies. In recent years, some Austinites have adopted the unofficial slogan “Keep Austin Weird“,^[21] which refers to the desire to protect small, unique, and local businesses from being overrun by large corporations.^[22] Since the late 19th century, Austin has also been known as the “City of the Violet Crown“, because of the colorful glow of light across the hills just after sunset.^[23]

In 1987, Austin originated and remains the site for South by Southwest (stylized as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By), an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that take place in mid-March.

Emerging from a strong economic focus on government and education, since the 1990s, Austin has become a center for technology and business.^[24][25] The technology roots in Austin can be traced back to the 1960s when Tracor (now BAE Systems), a major defense electronics contractor, began operation in the city in 1962. IBM followed in 1967, opening a facility to produce its Selectric typewriters. Texas Instruments setup in Austin two years later, Motorola (now NXP Semiconductors) started semiconductor chip manufacturing in 1974. BAE Systems, IBM, and NXP Semiconductors still have campuses and manufacturing operations in Austin as of 2022. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including 3M, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Amazon, Apple, Facebook (Meta), Google, IBM, Intel, NXP Semiconductors, Oracle, Tesla, Texas Instruments, and Whole Foods Market. Dell‘s worldwide headquarters is located in the nearby suburb of Round Rock.^[26] With regard to education, Austin is the home of the University of Texas at Austin, which is one of the largest universities in the U.S., with over 50,000 students.^[27] In 2021, Austin became home to the Austin FC, the first (and currently only) major professional sports league in the city.

Contents

• 1History
• 2Geography
  • 2.1Cityscape
    • 2.1.1Downtown
  • 2.2Climate
    • 2.2.12011 drought
    • 2.2.22018 flooding and water crisis
    • 2.2.32021 winter storm
• 3Demographics
  • 3.1Race and ethnicity
  • 3.2Religion
  • 3.3Homelessness
• 4Economy
• 5Culture and contemporary life
  • 5.1Old Austin
  • 5.2Annual cultural events
  • 5.3Cuisine and breweries
  • 5.4Music
  • 5.5Film
  • 5.6Theater
  • 5.7Libraries
  • 5.8Museums and other points of interest
• 6Sports
• 7Parks and recreation
  • 7.1Lady Bird Lake
  • 7.2Barton Creek Greenbelt
  • 7.3Swimming holes
  • 7.4Other parks and recreation
• 8Government
  • 8.1Crime
    • 8.1.1Notable incidents
  • 8.2City government
  • 8.3Other levels of government
  • 8.4Politics
    • 8.4.1Gerrymandering
    • 8.4.2Environmental movement
• 9Education
  • 9.1Higher education
  • 9.2Public primary and secondary education
  • 9.3Private and alternative education
• 10Media
• 11Transportation
  • 11.1Highways
  • 11.2Tollways
  • 11.3Airports
  • 11.4Intercity transit
  • 11.5Public transportation
  • 11.6Ride sharing
  • 11.7Cycling and walking
• 12Notable people
• 13International relations
  • 13.1Sister cities
  • 13.2Friendship cities
• 14See also
• 15Notes
• 16References
• 17Further reading
• 18External links

History

Main article: History of Austin, Texas

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Austin, Texas.

Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of human habitation since at least 9200 BC. The area’s earliest known inhabitants lived during the late Pleistocene (Ice Age) and are linked to the Clovis culture around 9200 BC (over 11,200 years ago), based on evidence found throughout the area and documented at the much-studied Gault Site, midway between Georgetown and Fort Hood.^{[28][failed verification]}

When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area. The Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area.^[29] Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa–Olivares–Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area, though few permanent settlements were created for some time.^[30] In 1730, three Catholic missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in this area for only about seven months, and then was moved to San Antonio de Béxar and split into three missions.^[31]

During the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River. Spanish forts were established in what are now Bastrop and San Marcos.^[30][32] Following Mexico’s independence, new settlements were established in Central Texas, but growth in the region was stagnant because of conflicts with the regional Native Americans.^[32][33][34]

Statue of the Goddess of Liberty on the Texas State Capitol grounds, prior to installation atop the rotunda

In 1835–1836, Texans fought and won independence from Mexico. Texas thus became an independent country with its own president, congress, and monetary system. In 1839, the Texas Congress formed a commission to seek a site for a new capital of the Republic of Texas to replace Houston.^[35] When he was Vice President of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar had visited the area during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838. He advised the commissioners to consider the area on the north bank of the Colorado River (near the present-day Congress Avenue Bridge), noting the area’s hills, waterways, and pleasant surroundings.^[36] It was seen as a convenient crossroads for trade routes between Santa Fe and Galveston Bay, as well as routes between northern Mexico and the Red River.^[37] In 1839, the site was chosen, and was briefly incorporated under the name “Waterloo”.^[38] Shortly afterward, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas” and the republic’s first secretary of state.

The city grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin.^[39]

Second capitol building in Austin

Edwin Waller was picked by Lamar to survey the village and draft a plan laying out the new capital.^[35] The original site was narrowed to 640 acres (260 ha) that fronted the Colorado River between two creeks, Shoal Creek and Waller Creek, which was later named in his honor. Waller and a team of surveyors developed Austin’s first city plan, commonly known as the Waller Plan, dividing the site into a 14-block grid plan bisected by a broad north–south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, running up from the river to Capital Square, where the new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. A temporary one-story capitol was erected on the corner of Colorado and 8th Streets. On August 1, 1839, the first auction of 217 out of 306 lots total was held.^[35][37] The Waller Plan designed and surveyed now forms the basis of downtown Austin.

In 1840, a series of conflicts between the Texas Rangers and the Comanches, known as the Council House Fight and the Battle of Plum Creek, pushed the Comanches westward, mostly ending conflicts in Central Texas.^[40] Settlement in the area began to expand quickly. Travis County was established in 1840, and the surrounding counties were mostly established within the next two decades.^[34]

Initially, the new capital thrived but Lamar’s political enemy, Sam Houston, used two Mexican army incursions to San Antonio as an excuse to move the government. Sam Houston fought bitterly against Lamar’s decision to establish the capital in such a remote wilderness. The men and women who traveled mainly from Houston to conduct government business were intensely disappointed as well. By 1840, the population had risen to 856, nearly half of whom fled Austin when Congress recessed.^[41] The resident African American population listed in January of this same year was 176.^[42] The fear of Austin’s proximity to the Indians and Mexico, which still considered Texas a part of their land, created an immense motive for Sam Houston, the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, to relocate the capital once again in 1841. Upon threats of Mexican troops in Texas, Houston raided the Land Office to transfer all official documents to Houston for safe keeping in what was later known as the Archive War, but the people of Austin would not allow this unaccompanied decision to be executed. The documents stayed, but the capital would temporarily move from Austin to Houston to Washington-on-the-Brazos. Without the governmental body, Austin’s population declined to a low of only a few hundred people throughout the early 1840s. The voting by the fourth President of the Republic, Anson Jones, and Congress, who reconvened in Austin in 1845, settled the issue to keep Austin the seat of government, as well as annex the Republic of Texas into the United States.

In 1860, 38% of Travis County residents were slaves.^[43] In 1861, with the outbreak of the American Civil War, voters in Austin and other Central Texas communities voted against secession.^[32][35] However, as the war progressed and fears of attack by Union forces increased, Austin contributed hundreds of men to the Confederate forces. The African American population of Austin swelled dramatically after the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas by Union General Gordon Granger at Galveston, in an event commemorated as Juneteenth. Black communities such as Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, and Clarksville were established, with Clarksville being the oldest surviving freedomtown ‒ the original post-Civil War settlements founded by former African-American slaves ‒ west of the Mississippi River.^[35] In 1870, blacks made up 36.5% of Austin’s population.^[44]

An 1873 illustration of Edwin Waller’s layout for Austin

The postwar period saw dramatic population and economic growth. The opening of the Houston and Texas Central Railway (H&TC) in 1871^[45] turned Austin into the major trading center for the region, with the ability to transport both cotton and cattle. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas (MKT) line followed close behind.^[46] Austin was also the terminus of the southernmost leg of the Chisholm Trail, and “drovers” pushed cattle north to the railroad.^[47] Cotton was one of the few crops produced locally for export, and a cotton gin engine was located downtown near the trains for “ginning” cotton of its seeds and turning the product into bales for shipment.^[48] However, as other new railroads were built through the region in the 1870s, Austin began to lose its primacy in trade to the surrounding communities.^[35] In addition, the areas east of Austin took over cattle and cotton production from Austin, especially in towns like Hutto and Taylor that sit over the blackland prairie, with its deep, rich soils for producing cotton and hay.^[49][50]

In September 1881, Austin public schools held their first classes. The same year, Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute (now part of Huston–Tillotson University) opened its doors. The University of Texas held its first classes in 1883, although classes had been held in the original wooden state capitol for four years before.^[51]

During the 1880s, Austin gained new prominence as the state capitol building was completed in 1888 and claimed as the seventh largest building in the world.^[35] In the late 19th century, Austin expanded its city limits to more than three times its former area, and the first granite dam was built on the Colorado River to power a new street car line and the new “moon towers“.^[35] The first dam washed away in a flood on April 7, 1900.^[52]

In the late 1920s and 1930s, Austin implemented the 1928 Austin city plan through a series of civic development and beautification projects that created much of the city’s infrastructure and many of its parks. In addition, the state legislature established the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) that, along with the city of Austin, created the system of dams along the Colorado River to form the Highland Lakes. These projects were enabled in large part because the Public Works Administration provided Austin with greater funding for municipal construction projects than other Texas cities.^[35]

During the early twentieth century, a three-way system of social segregation emerged in Austin, with Anglos, African Americans and Mexicans being separated by custom or law in most aspects of life, including housing, health care, and education. Many of the municipal improvement programs initiated during this period—such as the construction of new roads, schools, and hospitals—were deliberately designed to institutionalize this system of segregation. Deed restrictions also played an important role in residential segregation. After 1935 most housing deeds prohibited African Americans (and sometimes other nonwhite groups) from using land.^[53] Combined with the system of segregated public services, racial segregation increased in Austin during the first half of the twentieth century, with African Americans and Mexicans experiencing high levels of discrimination and social marginalization.^[54]

In 1940, the destroyed granite dam on the Colorado River was finally replaced by a hollow concrete dam^[55] that formed Lake McDonald (now called Lake Austin) and which has withstood all floods since. In addition, the much larger Mansfield Dam was built by the LCRA upstream of Austin to form Lake Travis, a flood-control reservoir.

^[56] In the early 20th century, the Texas Oil Boom took hold, creating tremendous economic opportunities in Southeast Texas and North Texas. The growth generated by this boom largely passed by Austin at first, with the city slipping from fourth largest to 10th largest in Texas between 1880 and 1920.^[35]

After a severe lull in economic growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its steady development. Following the mid-20th century, Austin became established as one of Texas’ major metropolitan centers. In 1970, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Austin’s population as 14.5% Hispanic, 11.9% black, and 73.4% non-Hispanic white.^[44] In the late 20th century, Austin emerged as an important high tech center for semiconductors and software. The University of Texas at Austin emerged as a major university.^[57]

The 1970s saw Austin’s emergence in the national music scene, with local artists such as Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, and Stevie Ray Vaughan and iconic music venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters. Over time, the long-running television program Austin City Limits, its namesake Austin City Limits Festival, and the South by Southwest music festival solidified the city’s place in the music industry.^[25]

Geography

Austin as seen from space, 2020

Austin, the southernmost state capital of the contiguous 48 states, is located in Central Texas on the Colorado River. Austin is 146 miles (230 km) northwest of Houston,^[58] 182 miles (290 km) south of Dallas^[59] and 74 miles (120 km) northeast of San Antonio.^[60]

Austin occupies a total area of 305.1 square miles (790.1 km²). Approximately 7.2 square miles (18.6 km²) of this area is water.^[5] Austin is situated at the foot of the Balcones Escarpment, on the Colorado River, with three artificial lakes within the city limits: Lady Bird Lake (formerly known as Town Lake), Lake Austin (both created by dams along the Colorado River), and Lake Walter E. Long that is partly used for cooling water for the Decker Power Plant. Mansfield Dam and the foot of Lake Travis are located within the city’s limits.^[35] Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Travis are each on the Colorado River.^[35]

The elevation of Austin varies from 425 feet (130 m) to approximately 1,000 feet (305 m) above sea level.^[61] Due to the fact it straddles the Balcones Fault, much of the eastern part of the city is flat, with heavy clay and loam soils, whereas the western part and western suburbs consist of rolling hills on the edge of the Texas Hill Country.^[62] Because the hills to the west are primarily limestone rock with a thin covering of topsoil, portions of the city are frequently subjected to flash floods from the runoff caused by thunderstorms.^[63][64] To help control this runoff and to generate hydroelectric power, the Lower Colorado River Authority operates a series of dams that form the Texas Highland Lakes. The lakes also provide venues for boating, swimming, and other forms of recreation within several parks on the lake shores.^[65]

Austin is located at the intersection of four major ecological regions, and is consequently a temperate-to-hot green oasis with a highly variable climate having some characteristics of the desert, the tropics, and a wetter climate.^[66][67] The area is very diverse ecologically and biologically, and is home to a variety of animals and plants.^[68] Notably, the area is home to many types of wildflowers that blossom throughout the year but especially in the spring. This includes the popular bluebonnets, some planted by “Lady Bird” Johnson, wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.^[69]

The soils of Austin range from shallow, gravelly clay loams over limestone in the western outskirts to deep, fine sandy loams, silty clay loams, silty clays or clays in the city’s eastern part. Some of the clays have pronounced shrink-swell properties and are difficult to work under most moisture conditions. Many of Austin’s soils, especially the clay-rich types, are slightly to moderately alkaline and have free calcium carbonate.^[70]

Cityscape[edit]

See also: List of Austin neighborhoods and List of tallest buildings in Austin, Texas

Panorama of Austin skyline in 2018

Austin’s skyline historically was modest, dominated by the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas Main Building. However, since the 2000s, many new high-rise towers have been constructed.^[71] Austin is currently undergoing a skyscraper boom, which includes recent construction on new office, hotel and residential buildings. Downtown’s buildings are somewhat spread out, partly due to a set of zoning restrictions that preserve the view of the Texas State Capitol from various locations around Austin, known as the Capitol View Corridors.^[72]

One of the 15 remaining moonlight towers in Austin

At night, parts of Austin are lit by “artificial moonlight” from moonlight towers built to illuminate the central part of the city.^[73] The 165-foot (50 m) moonlight towers were built in the late 19th century and are now recognized as historic landmarks. Only 15 of the 31 original innovative towers remain standing in Austin, but none remain in any of the other cities where they were installed. The towers are featured in the 1993 film Dazed and Confused.