Texas Booms as Financial Firms Abandon Wall Street for 'Y'all Street'

Lenwood Brooks, a Mississippi native and former chief of staff at an agency overseeing credit unions, has joined the ranks of those leaving Wall Street for what Texans are calling 'Y'all Street' in Dallas. After years working in Washington, D.C., he found that most jobs were now in Texas.

The trend is not new, but it's becoming impossible to ignore. Financial firms and their employees have been drawn to the Lone Star State by low taxes, lighter regulation, and aggressive courting by politicians like Governor Greg Abbott, who calls Texas 'the financial capital of America.'

Since February 2020, finance jobs in Dallas have grown by 23.2%, outpacing New York City's 6% increase, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The sector now employs 317,000 people in Dallas, accounting for 10.1% of total employment.

While top-level executives remain in Manhattan, a new stock exchange has launched in Texas, and Goldman Sachs is building a campus for over 5,000 employees, its largest outside New York City. JPMorgan Chase already has more employees in Texas than any other state.