With Texas coming in second for the fifth consecutive year on U-Haul’s 2020 migration growth rankings, it’s no surprise that the Austin-Round Rock MSA ended 2020 with a record-breaking $17 billion housing market. And, in its recently released 2021 Texas Housing & Economic Outlook, economists at the Texas Real Estate Research Center at A&M expect the Austin MSA 2021 housing market to continue this progress with strong demand and low inventories accompanied by solid price growth.

As for Austin economic indicators, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported that Austin’s unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent in December compared to the state’s jobless rate of 7.2 percent and the nation’s rate of 6.7 percent.

Fourth-quarter job growth was positive in most sectors with financial activities leading the job expansion (30.8 percent or 4,740 jobs), followed by manufacturing (18.7 percent or 2,700 jobs) and construction and mining (15.9 percent or 2,640 jobs). While job gains have been broad-based since May, those gains have not been large enough to offset the losses in March and April as net payrolls decreased by 34,415 in 2020. However, all industries except government had net positive growth in 2020.