Most recent annual gross domestic product observation for the Austin metro from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (FRED series NGMP12420). Our data feed carries the value but not its reference year, so we do not state one.
Austin-Round Rock Metro
A civilian labor force of 1,562,547 in June 2026, and $78.36B of declared value across non-closed TDLR construction filings. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures via FRED.
Labor market
Five-county metro employment
- Total nonfarm jobs
- 1.4M+1.5% year over year
- Unemployment rate
- 4.1%last 12 months
- Average weekly wage · quarterly, BLS QCEW
- $1,836
- Per capita income · annual, BEA
- $80,471
As of — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics, via FRED (series AUST448URN). Not seasonally adjusted.
Deep dive: employment dataHousing market
Prices, inventory and activity
- Median list price
- $462K-9.6% year over year
- Active listings
- 12,655last 12 months
- 67 days
- Median days on market
- $234
- Per square foot
- 1,681
- Units permitted · June 2026
As of — Realtor.com, via FRED (series MEDLISPRI12420).
Deep dive: housing marketConstruction
Non-closed TDLR construction filings
No mining, logging and construction employment figure is in the data this page was built from. Travis County carries the largest declared value at $47.14B.
No share of nonfarm employment is shown: series AUST448NRMN and series AUST448NA did not both return an observation for the same month here, and a ratio of two different months is not a share.
- $78.36B
- Declared value, as filed
- 5,410
- New construction
- 1,348
- Registered in 6 months
- 28K
- Site-plan units, all years
No observations for this series were available when this page was built, so no chart is drawn. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics, via FRED (series AUST448NRMN).
Going Out
Spent at Central Texas bars, restaurants and clubs
Taxable mixed-beverage receipts, Aug 2025 – Jul 2026 — +1.1% against $1.49B in the twelve months before (Aug 2024 – Jul 2025).
2,180 returns were filed across Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell counties for July 2026, reporting $114.5M between them — +3.8% against the same month a year earlier, when $110.3M was reported.
- $114.5M
- July 2026
- $125.2M
- Average month, last 12
- $150.9M
- Record: October 2024
This is on-premise drinking only — what venues holding a mixed-beverage permit report selling. Package-store, grocery and convenience-store alcohol is taxed separately and is not in this dataset, so this is a floor on what the region spends on alcohol, not the whole of it.
What they were drinking, July 2026
- Liquor$71.9M62.8%
- Beer$28.8M25.1%
- Wine$13.0M11.3%
- Cover charges$745K0.7%
- Not broken down by the filer$174K0.2%
Bars are scaled against the month’s $114.5M total, so the five add up to all of it. The last row is receipts from returns that reported a total without splitting it by category — the Comptroller publishes what was filed, and we do not redistribute it across the other four.
Mixed-beverage receipts by month, Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell counties
Mixed-beverage gross receipts, Central Texas ran $73.3M in September 2016 and $114.5M in July 2026 — up 56.2% across 119 observations. Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Mixed Beverage Gross Receipts (dataset naix-2893). March and October run visibly above their neighbours in most years — SXSW and ACL both fall in those months.
Show the 119 observations behind this chart
| Period | US dollars |
|---|---|
| September 2016 | $73.3M |
| October 2016 | $78.7M |
| November 2016 | $66.3M |
| December 2016 | $72.5M |
| January 2017 | $66.1M |
| February 2017 | $70.3M |
| March 2017 | $90.8M |
| April 2017 | $82.2M |
| May 2017 | $78.7M |
| June 2017 | $75.5M |
| July 2017 | $74.0M |
| August 2017 | $66.9M |
| September 2017 | $80.3M |
| October 2017 | $83.3M |
| November 2017 | $71.0M |
| December 2017 | $78.8M |
| January 2018 | $67.6M |
| February 2018 | $73.5M |
| March 2018 | $98.5M |
| April 2018 | $88.1M |
| May 2018 | $87.5M |
| June 2018 | $84.5M |
| July 2018 | $78.5M |
| August 2018 | $80.2M |
| September 2018 | $85.7M |
| October 2018 | $88.3M |
| November 2018 | $79.3M |
| December 2018 | $84.7M |
| January 2019 | $74.7M |
| February 2019 | $80.3M |
| March 2019 | $107.2M |
| April 2019 | $91.4M |
| May 2019 | $98.2M |
| June 2019 | $90.3M |
| July 2019 | $85.5M |
| August 2019 | $91.0M |
| September 2019 | $93.8M |
| October 2019 | $92.6M |
| November 2019 | $94.6M |
| December 2019 | $90.1M |
| January 2020 | $83.2M |
| February 2020 | $90.0M |
| March 2020 | $45.5M |
| April 2020 | $4.3M |
| May 2020 | $23.5M |
| June 2020 | $39.2M |
| July 2020 | $29.5M |
| August 2020 | $40.1M |
| September 2020 | $48.6M |
| October 2020 | $60.8M |
| November 2020 | $50.9M |
| December 2020 | $49.6M |
| January 2021 | $52.3M |
| February 2021 | $44.3M |
| March 2021 | $81.5M |
| April 2021 | $90.5M |
| May 2021 | $107.1M |
| June 2021 | $99.9M |
| July 2021 | $107.9M |
| August 2021 | $92.7M |
| September 2021 | $106.3M |
| October 2021 | $126.5M |
| November 2021 | $99.9M |
| December 2021 | $104.3M |
| January 2022 | $83.9M |
| February 2022 | $97.3M |
| March 2022 | $133.8M |
| April 2022 | $135.4M |
| May 2022 | $130.7M |
| June 2022 | $118.0M |
| July 2022 | $119.2M |
| August 2022 | $112.7M |
| September 2022 | $129.6M |
| October 2022 | $139.5M |
| November 2022 | $112.4M |
| December 2022 | $120.3M |
| January 2023 | $106.2M |
| February 2023 | $113.3M |
| March 2023 | $144.6M |
| April 2023 | $138.1M |
| May 2023 | $131.1M |
| June 2023 | $120.5M |
| July 2023 | $118.4M |
| August 2023 | $111.2M |
| September 2023 | $128.4M |
| October 2023 | $147.3M |
| November 2023 | $115.1M |
| December 2023 | $123.5M |
| January 2024 | $96.6M |
| February 2024 | $114.4M |
| March 2024 | $144.8M |
| April 2024 | $138.3M |
| May 2024 | $136.5M |
| June 2024 | $117.2M |
| July 2024 | $108.5M |
| August 2024 | $116.4M |
| September 2024 | $118.7M |
| October 2024 | $150.9M |
| November 2024 | $125.4M |
| December 2024 | $119.7M |
| January 2025 | $97.6M |
| February 2025 | $111.5M |
| March 2025 | $145.2M |
| April 2025 | $136.7M |
| May 2025 | $139.4M |
| June 2025 | $115.1M |
| July 2025 | $110.3M |
| August 2025 | $118.5M |
| September 2025 | $117.9M |
| October 2025 | $148.9M |
| November 2025 | $121.4M |
| December 2025 | $120.4M |
| January 2026 | $100.8M |
| February 2026 | $117.7M |
| March 2026 | $138.6M |
| April 2026 | $136.2M |
| May 2026 | $144.8M |
| June 2026 | $123.2M |
| July 2026 | $114.5M |
As of — Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Mixed Beverage Gross Receipts, via FRED (series naix-2893). Not seasonally adjusted.
Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Mixed Beverage Gross Receipts (dataset naix-2893), summed over Comptroller county codes for Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell. Returns are due the 20th of the following month, so the newest complete month trails the calendar by one to two months. A partial August 2026 exists in the dataset and is deliberately not shown — too few venues have filed for it to be a month. Per-venue figures are at Austin bar revenue.
Regional breakdown
Unemployment rate by county, June 2026 · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics, via FRED (series LAUS county series)
- Lowest reported
Travis
- Unemployment
- 4.0%(-0.1 pp vs metro)
- Labor force
- 878K
6,758 TDLR filings$47.14B Williamson
- Unemployment
- 4.2%(+0.1 pp vs metro)
- Labor force
- 436K
3,252 TDLR filings$16.92BHays
- Unemployment
- 4.1%(0.0 pp vs metro)
- Labor force
- 170K
1,244 TDLR filings$6.31BBastrop
- Unemployment
- 4.4%(+0.3 pp vs metro)
- Labor force
- 59K
248 TDLR filings$4.26BCaldwell
- Unemployment
- 4.5%(+0.4 pp vs metro)
- Labor force
- 26K
129 TDLR filings$3.72B
Central Texas, in six sourced sentences
The Austin metro held 1,427,800 nonfarm jobs, +1.5% against a year earlier (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, via FRED).
Metro unemployment was 4.1% in June 2026; the lowest county rate was Travis County at 4.0% (BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics, via FRED).
The median listing price was $462K in July 2026, with 12,655 homes listed for sale in July 2026 and a median 67 days on market (Realtor.com, via FRED).
1,681 new private housing units were authorised by building permit in the Austin metro in June 2026, -11.2% year over year (U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, via FRED).
The average weekly wage across the Austin metro was $1,836, +5.4% year over year — a quarterly figure from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, via FRED. Per capita personal income, an annual figure from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, was $80,471. The two describe different periods and are not directly comparable.
Bars, restaurants and clubs across Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell counties reported $1.50B in taxable mixed-beverage receipts over the twelve months to July 2026, +1.1% against the twelve months before (Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, dataset naix-2893). That covers on-premise sales only, not package or grocery alcohol.
Sources and vintages
- Employment, unemployment, wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics, via FRED (series AUST448URN); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics, via FRED (series AUST448NA); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Employment Statistics, via FRED (series AUST448NRMN); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, via FRED (series ENUC124240010SA). Newest labor observation June 2026.
- Income & GDP: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, via FRED (series AUST448PCPI); U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, via FRED (series NGMP12420). Both annual; our feed does not carry their reference years.
- Housing: Realtor.com, via FRED (series MEDLISPRI12420); Realtor.com, via FRED (series ACTLISCOU12420); Realtor.com, via FRED (series MEDDAYONMAR12420); U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, via FRED (series AUST448BPPRIVSA). Newest housing observation July 2026.
- Construction filings & site plans: Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and City of Austin Open Data. Cumulative totals across all years on record; neither feed publishes an as-of date, so none is shown.
- Alcohol receipts: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Mixed Beverage Gross Receipts (naix-2893), monthly, as filed by each permit holder. Newest complete month July 2026. On-premise sales only — package and grocery alcohol is taxed separately and is not in this dataset.
- There is no single “last updated” date for this page, and we do not print one. It combines monthly, quarterly and annual series that land at different times; each figure states the period it describes instead.
Central Texas economy: frequently asked questions
What counties make up the Central Texas economy?
This explorer covers the five counties of the Austin–Round Rock–Georgetown Metropolitan Statistical Area (CBSA 12420): Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell. That is the geography federal agencies use when they publish Austin-area economic data, which is why the figures here cover all five counties rather than the city of Austin alone. Travis County contains the city itself.
What is the Austin unemployment rate right now?
The most recent published figure is 4.1% for the Austin metro in June 2026, with Travis County the lowest of the five counties at 4.0%. Note the month: county and metro unemployment come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics programme, which publishes several weeks after the month it describes, so the newest available figure is never today's.
Which Central Texas county has the strongest economy?
It depends what you measure, and this page will not pick one number for you. By unemployment rate — the only measure published consistently for all five counties — Travis County was lowest at 4.0% in June 2026. Travis County is much the largest by labor force and output. The county cards above and the individual county pages let you compare unemployment, labor force and construction activity side by side.
How often is this economic data updated, and how old is it?
Each figure on this page names the period it describes, next to the number. The underlying series publish on different clocks: unemployment, labor force, jobs, listing prices and building permits are monthly; average weekly wages and the house price index are quarterly; per capita income and metro GDP are annual. All of them publish in arrears, so the newest available observation is always some weeks or months behind today — the newest labor observation on this page is June 2026. We deliberately do not stamp the page with the date it was last rebuilt, because that describes our servers rather than the economy.
Where does this economic data come from?
Employment, unemployment, labor force and wages come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; per capita income and metro GDP from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; residential building permits from the U.S. Census Bureau; the house price index from the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency; and listing prices, inventory and days on market from Realtor.com. All are retrieved through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED service, which aggregates rather than produces the data — so this site names the producing agency and the FRED series identifier alongside each figure. Construction activity comes from Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation project filings and City of Austin Open Data site plans.