Dallas employers converged on the MLK Celebration Job Fair on Wednesday with a clear goal: to get ahead of staffing needs for 2026 as North Texas pulls in more and more businesses.
Kent Anderson, the workforce initiatives and employer coordinator for Workforce Solutions of Greater Dallas, which hosts the annual event, said about 1,450 job seekers registered for the job fair in Fair Park.
Over 300 checked in the first hour alone. He pointed out that the event’s structure, with on-site interview rooms and a dedicated space for resume workshops, is designed to streamline hiring and offer immediate employment pathways for candidates.
Millions of new residents are expected to move to North Texas by 2050 to fill hundreds of thousands of new jobs as businesses flock to the region and employees retire, according to workforce advocates and data from the North Central Texas Council of Governments — an association of local governments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
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With this in mind, companies spanning across logistics, health care, technology, and public safety, among other industries, filled the first and second floors of the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center. Some of the employers highlighted ongoing turnover rates in warehouse environments and an urgent push to secure candidates for the months ahead.
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“We’re about to go into our busy season,” said Luis Ramos, a senior industrial recruiter for Inmar Intelligence. “We’re hiring RX processors, shipping, receiving, security guards, production supervisors, shipping supervisors. We also have some open tech roles with our corporate offices.”
Replenishing those roles are vital given the warehouse environment’s “steady turnover rate,” Ramos said. The job fairs pay off: Ramos said he’s already scheduled 10 interviews for tomorrow, and they typically end up hiring “at least five or six people from the fair.”
Demand for workers is not limited to one sector. Employers are seeking to fill roles at every level, illustrating the diversity and scale of regional hiring activity. Some organizations discussed their efforts to expand their hiring pools, focusing on second-chance candidates and individuals returning to the workforce.
Job seekers and recruiters participated in the 2026 MLK Celebration Job Fair at the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center in Fair Park on Wednesday, January 14, 2026.
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Employers are also tapping into specialized pipelines. Detrick Garza-Propes, a business development and placement manager at NPower, a national technology training nonprofit, said they offer programs in areas like IT support, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. Their programs also serve veterans, spouses, and young adults with certifications and job placement, he said.
With staffing demands high, some job seekers, like Johnny Lopez, are hoping to transition into new lines of work. He’s worked in the mechanical industry for 40 years, but now he’s seeking a warehouse role, or an indoor role “that’s not out in the cold.”
His advice to fellow job seekers is straightforward: “Get up, go out, and look.”
Job seekers can still attend the Dallas workforce agency’s next events. Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas is hosting a Lancaster Community Job Fair on Jan. 22 at the Lancaster High School Competition Gym. The agency is also hosting a Greenville Avenue Hiring Event on Jan. 28 at the Greenville Workforce Center.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.