Hot on the heels of numerous 2025 economic triumphs — including the celebration of 13 straight years of Governor’s Cup wins as the top-performing state for job-creating business relocations and expansions — Texas continues to dominate as the economic engine of America.
Less than two months into 2026, Texas is already scoring important victories that foster economic prosperity for every hardworking Texan. Under Governor Greg Abbott’s conservative leadership, the Lone Star State is proving once again that pro-growth reforms, minimal red tape, and strategic investments are what makes Texas great. Here are three notable wins for Texas so far this year:
1. Texas Leads Nation For 2025 Job Gains
Texas, once again, has been crowned America’s jobs leader. December labor market data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which was officially released in January 2026, shows that the state gained the most nonfarm jobs in the nation in 2025 and set new records for total nonfarm jobs, the number of Texans working, and the size of the Texas labor force.
Notably, Texas gained 132,500 jobs from December 2024 to December 2025, more than any other state, outpacing the national annual job growth rate by half a percentage point. Texas also reached a new high with the largest labor force ever in the state’s history at 15,283,600.
2. Governor Abbott Announces Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund Grant to Arm Inc., Coherent, and LTD Material
Texas is leading the way in the technologies of tomorrow. Three Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund (TSIF) grants have been awarded since January 2026 as part of the TSIF grant program, representing a total of more than $250 million in capital investment. The TSIF grant program, which was created as part of the Texas CHIPS Act in 2023, solidifies Texas’ leadership in semiconductor research, design, and manufacturing.
A newly-announced TSIF grant of $4,162,550 to Arm Inc. will support the expansion of Arm’s engineering and innovation hub in Austin, which includes a new semiconductor lab with failure analysis capabilities. The expansion is expected to create more than 320 jobs.
Coherent Corp’s grant of $14,076,031 will accelerate scaled production of Indium Phosphide (InP) wafers in Sherman. InP technology is essential for enabling next-generation photonics and high-speed connectivity solutions such as data communications, telecommunication, and artificial intelligence interconnects, to name a few.
Governor Greg Abbott also extended a $1,007,074 grant to LTD Material LLC for the construction of a new 88,000-square-foot manufacturing and research facility in Austin. The new facility will expand production capacity for high-purity quartz parts essential to wafer fabrication and semiconductor manufacturing and is expected to create 40 jobs.
3. Governor Abbott Announces Davie Defense Expansion In Texas
In a major victory for Texas, Davie Defense Inc. announced in February that it would be expanding its shipbuilding capacity in Galveston and Port Arthur to build Arctic icebreakers, creating more than 2,400 new jobs and representing more than $730 million in capital investment.
The mammoth investment will not only offer thousands of new job opportunities to Texans, but it will also bolster national defense by expanding capacity for the manufacturing of icebreakers and other specialized vessels for the U.S. government and commercial customers.
Now, with less than two weeks remaining until the March 3 primary elections in Texas, Governor Abbott has hit the road to remind Texans that the only way to keep Texas, Texas — to preserve the state’s robust economy that ranks eighth largest in the world — is to get out the vote and vote to keep Texas red.
Governor Abbott’s “Let’s Roll” get out the vote tour comes with the support of Texas job creators large and small — as well as the largest coalition of union leaders to ever endorse a Republican candidate for Governor in Texas. Watch below a 90-second video highlighting the Governor’s strong support from the great men and women who power Texas: