Wall Street’s big banks have turned their eyes to Dallas, catapulting it to the second spot behind New York City for the number of finance workers.
The financial floodgates have opened in Big D.
Dallas is now a financial powerhouse, trailing only New York in finance worker numbers as Wall Street firms chase lower-cost leases and cheaper labor.
According to Bloomberg, Dallas-Fort Worth, the country’s fourth-largest metro area, has surpassed Chicago and Los Angeles during the pandemic, becoming the No. 2 destination for finance jobs.
Three of New York City’s financial giants—Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—are expanding in Dallas, attracted by the wave of people who moved to Texas during the pandemic.
Living costs are roughly 40% lower in Dallas than in New York, per Salary.com, reducing the salaries needed to satisfy workers.
In Dallas, financial and investment analysts earn an average of $102,000 annually, nearly 30% less than their New York counterparts, according to Bloomberg.
Salaries also trend lower in Texas due to the nature of jobs, with a higher concentration of back-office roles like engineering, customer service, and loan processing, Bloomberg reported.
High-profile bets on Dallas include Goldman Sachs, which began construction on a three-building, 5,000-person campus in Victory Park, just outside downtown Dallas, last October.
The $500 million, 815,000-square-foot project was greenlit with $18 million in tax breaks from Dallas, contingent on bringing up to 5,000 jobs to the city.
When the campus opens in 2027, it will feature underground parking, first-floor retail, a 1.5-acre urban park, a hotel, and residential towers, as detailed in documents filed with Dallas’ city plan commission.
Asked for comment, a Goldman spokesperson referred to COO John Waldron’s remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony, where he hailed Dallas as “a hub for talent, innovation, and opportunity.”
Waldron also highlighted that the Dallas office will be the bank’s “second-largest in the Americas, outside of our global headquarters in New York City.”
Wells Fargo, long established in Texas, is expanding with a $500 million campus for up to 3,000 workers in Irving, a suburb 12 miles from Dallas, Bloomberg reported.
The bank secured over $30 million in tax incentives to build the 850,000-square-foot North Texas hub, consisting of two buildings and a 4,000-space garage, slated to open by the end of 2026.
Last month, Bank of America, the second-largest US bank by assets, broke ground on a 30-story high-rise near Goldman’s future Dallas headquarters.
Jennifer Chandler, Bank of America’s market president in Dallas, emphasized the advantages of the central US location.
“We love the central location,” Chandler told Bloomberg. “It’s very accessible, and the quality of living is strong,” she added, referencing the region’s two airports and 14,000 Dallas-based employees.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area now boasts over 380,000 finance industry workers, Bloomberg noted, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Though still far behind New York, the top finance job hub with 809,000 industry employees, Dallas is closing the gap.
Finance firms occupy 28 million square feet of office space in Dallas, second only to New York, Bloomberg reported, based on Cushman and Wakefield data.
Smaller financial firms moving south include Charles Schwab, which re-designated its headquarters from San Francisco to Westlake, Texas—about 32 miles from Dallas—after acquiring TD Ameritrade in 2020.
Schwab’s 1.1 million-square-foot campus, a three-year, $100 million project, offers amenities like a café, training center, collaboration spaces, and more, according to the firm’s website.
In 2021, Canyon Partners, a $24 billion Los Angeles-based fund, opened a Dallas office, followed in 2022 by Atalaya Capital Management, a $10 billion investment advisory firm, which established its first office outside NYC.
