Austin among top cities to launch a business

May 13--Austin ranked No. 4 in the country among the top cities to start a business, according to a new report from personal finance website WalletHub.

The report compared 100 U.S. cities across 19 indicators of startup viability and analyzed their business environment, access to resource and business costs.

Orlando took the No. 1 spot for overall rank of the best city to start a business, followed by Oklahoma City, Miami and Austin.

However, Austin ranked No. 1 for its "business environment," according to the survey. WalletHub calculated a city's business environment score by analyzing factors such as the length of average work week, average growth in number of small businesses, startups per capita and job growth.

Source:WalletHub

Twelve additional Texas cities made WalletHub's list, with Fort Worth at No. 11 in the study's overall ranking and Houston at No. 13.

Chesapeake, Vt., earned spot 100 on WalletHub's overall ranking.

WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez said Austin is a hospitable place to start a business because it has the largest average growth in the number of small businesses and one of the largest venture investment amounts per capita.

"The city's entrepreneurs have access to higher education assets, as almost half of the population has a college degree," Gonzalez said. "In addition to this, the growth in working age population is 16 percent, the third largest share."

In order to move ahead of other cities, Gonzalez said Austin should improve business costs and workforce availability.

"Austin has expensive office spaces, and labor costs as well as business taxes are among the highest in the country," she said. "Aside from high business costs, Austin also lacks in human capital availability. Improving these areas could move the city up in the ranking in the following years."

In August, WalletHub found that Texas is the seventh hardest-working state in America. The site qualified its definition of "hard-working" by looking at each state's average workweek hours, how many workers held multiple jobs and the amount of annual volunteer hours per resident, among other factors.

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