Economy

In its beginnings, Dallas relied on farming, neighboring Fort Worth's Stockyards, and its prime location on Native American trade routes to sustain itself. Dallas' key to growth came in 1873 with the building of multiple rail lines through the city. As Dallas grew and technology developed, cotton became its boon and by 1900 Dallas was the largest inland cotton market in the world, becoming a leader in cotton gin machinery manufacturing. By the early 1900s Dallas was a hub for economic activity all over the Southern United States and was selected in 1914 as the seat of the Eleventh Federal Reserve District. By 1925 Texas churned out more than ⅓ of the nation's cotton crop, with 31% of Texas cotton produced within a 100-mile (160 km) radius of Dallas. In the 1930s petroleum was discovered east of Dallas near Kilgore, Texas. Dallas' proximity to the discovery put it immediately at the center of the nation's petroleum market. Petroleum discoveries in the Permian Basin, the Panhandle, the Gulf Coast, and Oklahoma in the following years further solidified Dallas' position as the hub of the market.^[84]
The end of World War II left Dallas seeded with a nexus of communications, engineering, and production talent by companies such as Collins Radio Corporation. Decades later, the telecommunications and information revolutions still drive a large portion of the local economy. The city is sometimes referred to as the heart of "Silicon Prairie" because of a high concentration of telecommunications companies in the region, the epicenter of which lies along the Telecom Corridor located in Richardson, a northern suburb of Dallas. The Corridor is home to more than 5,700 companies^[85] including Texas Instruments (headquartered in Dallas), Nortel Networks, Alcatel Lucent, AT&T, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, Rockwell Collins, Cisco Systems, Sprint, Verizon Communications, XO Communications and until recently^[when?] CompUSA (which is now headquartered in Miami,FL). Texas Instruments, a major manufacturer, employs 10,400 people at its corporate headquarters and chip plants in Dallas.^[86]
In the 1980s Dallas was a real estate hotbed, with the increasing metropolitan population bringing with it a demand for new housing and office space. Several of Downtown Dallas' largest buildings are the fruit of this boom, but over-speculation, the savings and loan crisis and an oil bust brought the 80's building boom to an end for Dallas as well as its city sister Houston. Between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, central Dallas went through a slow period of growth. However, since the early 2000s the central core of Dallas has been enjoying steady and significant growth encompassing both repurposing of older commercial buildings in downtown Dallas into residential and hotel uses as well as the construction of new office and residential towers. The opening of Klyde Warren Park, built across Woodall Rodgers Freeway seamlessly connecting the central Dallas CBD to Uptown/Victory Park, has acted synergistically with the highly successful Dallas Arts District so that both have become catalysts for significant new development in central Dallas.
The residential real estate market in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex has not only been resilient but has once again returned to a boom status. Dallas and the greater metro have been leading the nation in apartment construction and net leasing with rents reaching all time highs. Single family home sales, whether pre-owned or new construction, along with home price appreciation are leading the nation.^[87][88]
A sudden drop in the price of oil, starting in mid-2014 and accelerating throughout 2015, has not affected Dallas and its greater metro due to the highly diversified nature of its economy. Dallas, and the DFW metro, continue to see strong demand for housing, apartment and office leasing, shopping center space, warehouse and industrial space with overall job growth remaining very robust. Oil dependent cities and regions have felt significant effects from the downturn but Dallas growth has continued unabated, strengthening in 2015. Significant national headquarters relocations to the area (as exemplified by Toyota's decision to leave California and establish its new North American headquarters in the Dallas region) coupled with significant expansions of regional offices for a variety of corporations and along with company relocations to downtown Dallas are helping drive the current boom in the Dallas economy. Dallas leads Texas' largest cities in Forbes' 2015 ranking of "The Best Place for Business and Careers".^[89]
The Dallas-Fort Worth MSA has one of the largest concentrations of corporate headquarters for publicly traded companies in the United States. Fortune Magazine's 2015 annual list of the Fortune 500 in America indicates the city of Dallas has 9 Fortune 500 companies,^[90] and the DFW region as a whole has 21, reflecting the strong growth in the metro economy and up from 18 the year before.^[91] In 2007–08, Comerica Bank and AT&T located their headquarters in Dallas. Additional Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Dallas include Energy Transfer Equity, HollyFrontier, Southwest Airlines, Tenet Healthcare, Texas Instruments, Dean Foods, Trinity Industries, and Energy Future Holdings. Irving is home to 6 Fortune 500 companies of its own, including ExxonMobil, the most profitable company in the world and the second largest by revenue for 2015,^[90] Kimberly-Clark, Fluor (engineering), Commercial Metals, Celanese, and Pioneer Natural Resources.^[90] Additional companies headquartered in the Metroplex include American Airlines, Regency Energy Partners, Atmos Energy, Neiman Marcus, Think Finance, 7-Eleven, Brinker International, Primoris Services, Radio Shack, D.R. Horton, AMS Pictures, id Software, ENSCO Offshore Drilling, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Chuck E. Cheese's, Zales and Fossil. Corporate headquarters in the northern suburb of Plano include HP Enterprise Services, Frito Lay, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, and JCPenney. Many of these companies—and others throughout the DFW metroplex—comprise the Dallas Regional Chamber.
In October 2016, Jacobs Engineering, a Fortune 500 company (ranked at 235 in 2015) and one of the world’s largest engineering companies, relocated from Pasadena, California to Dallas.^[92]
Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world's largest breast cancer organization^[93] was founded and is headquartered in Dallas.
In addition to its large number of businesses, Dallas has more shopping centers per capita than any other city in the United States and is also home to the second shopping center ever built in the United States, Highland Park Village, which opened in 1931.^[94] Dallas is home of the two other major malls in North Texas, the Dallas Galleria and NorthPark Center, which is the 2nd largest mall in Texas. Both malls feature high-end stores and are major tourist draws for the region.^[95][96]
According to Forbes magazine's annual list of "The Richest People in America" published September 21, 2011, the city itself is now home to 17 billionaires, up from 14 in 2009. In 2009 (with 14 billionaires) the city placed 6th worldwide among cities with the most billionaires.^[97][98] The ranking does not even take into account the 8 billionaires who live in the neighboring city of Fort Worth. In 2013, Forbes also ranked Dallas No. 13 on its list of the Best Places for Business and Careers.^[99]
Dallas is currently the third most popular destination for business travel in the United States, and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center is one of the largest and busiest convention centers in the country, at over 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m²), and the world's single-largest column-free exhibit hall.^[100]