BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – The Bryan-College Station Chamber of Commerce held their 2026 economic outlook conference on Wednesday. City leaders, government officials and other business leaders gathered to hear economic updates regarding Aggieland.
“Currently in Brazos County, we have about a 3.3 percent unemployment rate, at the state level [it’s] a little over 4 percent. The US level [is] 4.4 percent,” explained Spherion Staffing & Recruiting President and Owner, Katherine Kleemann. “Under 4 percent is very low unemployment. We historically have had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state. We’re the third lowest county, I think, in the state of Texas.”
Michael Ostrowski, with the city of College Station, says that of the over 70,000 employees within the city limits, about 40 percent of them work within the educational services sector.
However, healthcare remains one of the fastest growing sectors locally. Ostrowski said that since 2001, healthcare has grown 190 percent. Kleeman said the tightest job markets, meaning there are more available jobs than skilled workers to fill them, are healthcare and heavy industrial skilled trades.
“Healthcare is adding jobs at the fastest pace. Heavy industrial skill trade [are] hard to fill jobs [as well]. Both of those industries, it’s difficult to re-skill employees,” Kleeman said. “It takes a long time to get somebody to a clinical healthcare worker status or to some of the certificate programs necessary for those heavy skilled trade industrial jobs.”
Those jobs areas cannot be easily filled with AI, Kleeman says they remain promising in terms of wage growth as opposed to some other industries.
Along with what experts said was a strong job market comes new developments. As the population of BCS grows, commercial developments are also expanding in the area, including some major projects coming to College Station.
“Ferro Diagnostics and Biologicals, they’re an animal health related company. They’re constructing their world headquarters. It’s about a $15 million project, about 50,000 square feet,” said Ostrowski.
Other projects include a $10 million-dollar, 20,000 square foot building for local company, Strat Corp.
Over in Bryan, Deputy City Manager, Joey Dunn said they are focusing on the midtown park area, in particular the Schulman’s Movie Theater under construction.
“It is designed specifically for that space. It has indoor, outdoor space. We’re very excited about the pickleball, about the area along the boardwalk,” Dunn noted.
Despite delays in the building process, Dunn said they expect that project to be completed this year. He also said developing around the Rellis campus is a priority for the city.
“There’s really not a lot of residential feeding that area. It’s a really isolated, huge employment growth area, but where do people live? Where do they buy their gas? Where do they shop? Where do they go to restaurants,” Dunn emphasized.
Overall, Kleemann said locally, small businesses in particular are thriving.
“Small business is outpacing large business and job growth right now,” Kleemann added. “We’re a community that has a lot of small businesses, a lot of great small businesses.”
Michael O’Quinn who is the Chief of Staff for the President of Texas A&M University said they are trying to get more professors in classrooms and have engaged in a faculty hiring program for the next fiscal year.
Overall, the speakers at Wednesday’s conference were hopeful about the economic future of Aggieland.
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