Galveston and Montgomery counties currently top the list. Both posted a 5.9 percent over-the-year gain in average weekly wages, the fastest of any of the 28 largest Texas counties, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ fourth-quarter 2025 county wage data, released this June. A tight cluster sits just behind them: Cameron, Jefferson, Lubbock, and McLennan counties each gained 5.4 percent, and Brazoria County gained 5.2 percent. All six beat the national average weekly-wage gain of 4.2 percent for the same period.
That is the actual ranking, county by county, with the government’s own percentage figures attached. The rest of this piece explains what “average weekly wage” measures, where the growth has NOT kept up, why a single quarter of data deserves some skepticism, and how to check the trend for your own county going forward.
The full picture, largest Texas counties, Q4 2025 versus Q4 2024
The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), the Bureau of Labor Statistics program behind these figures, draws its numbers from actual unemployment-insurance payroll records rather than a survey sample, which is why economists treat it as one of the more reliable wage-growth measures available. Here is how the rest of the state’s 28 largest counties ranked, from fastest to slowest average weekly-wage growth in the year ending Q4 2025: Smith County, 5.0 percent; Potter and Webb counties, 4.7 percent each; El Paso and Tarrant counties, 3.9 percent each; Bell County, 3.4 percent; Denton, Hidalgo, and Williamson counties, 3.3 percent each; Midland County, 2.7 percent; Hays County, 2.4 percent; Comal County, 2.2 percent; and Ector County, at the bottom of the large-county list, 1.6 percent.
Notice what is missing from the top of that list: Austin’s Travis County and Dallas County itself, often assumed to be the growth leaders, are not among the fastest risers by percentage in this release, even though Travis County still commands the highest dollar level in the state ($2,061 average weekly wage, well above the $1,569 national average). Fast dollar growth and a high wage level are two different things, and this data separates them clearly.
Why Galveston and Montgomery, specifically
Both counties sit adjacent to Houston’s employment base rather than inside it, which matters for how QCEW counts wages. Montgomery County has absorbed years of corporate and residential growth spilling north out of Harris County, while Galveston County carries the port, petrochemical, and refining employment that anchors much of the upper Texas Gulf Coast. When wage growth clusters in counties like these rather than in the core metro county, it often signals that higher-paid positions, or entire employers, are relocating to the suburban or exurban ring rather than growing fastest downtown. Harris County itself, by contrast, posted 4.2 percent wage growth, tied with the national figure rather than leading it.
What “average weekly wage” actually measures, and its blind spot
QCEW’s average weekly wage is a mean, not a median: total wages paid in covered employment divided by the number of covered workers. That is a meaningfully different, and less forgiving, measure than the median wages used elsewhere in occupational wage data. A county’s average weekly wage can jump because existing workers got raises, or it can jump because the mix of jobs shifted toward higher earners, for instance if a large low-wage employer cut staff while a well-paid employer expanded, even if nobody currently employed there got a raise at all. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own technical note on the release flags this composition effect directly. A single quarter’s percentage gain, by itself, cannot tell you which of those two things happened in Galveston or Montgomery County.
That is also why a fast percentage gain off a low wage base can look more dramatic than it is. Smaller or lower-wage counties need a smaller dollar increase to register the same percentage jump as a high-wage county like Travis, so a ranking by percentage change alone should be read alongside the dollar wage level, not instead of it.
Where growth has lagged
Ector County, home to Midland’s neighboring oil-patch employment base, posted the slowest wage growth among the 28 largest counties at 1.6 percent, alongside a 1.3 percent decline in employment over the same period, the steepest employment drop on the list. Midland County itself grew wages only 2.7 percent while shedding 1.4 percent of its jobs, the sharpest employment contraction of any large Texas county. Both patterns point toward the same cause: a softer stretch for Permian Basin drilling activity, which cools both hiring and pay growth in the counties most exposed to it, even as coastal refining counties like Galveston keep climbing.
Smaller, non-metro counties are not part of this large-county comparison at all; BLS separately reports levels (but not year-over-year percent changes) for the state’s 226 smaller counties, where average weekly wages ranged as high as $2,103 in Carson County and as low as $747 in Menard County in the same quarter, underscoring how much the state’s wage map varies once you move outside the 28 largest counties.
One quarter is a data point, not a trend
Wage-growth rankings shift from release to release, and a strong single quarter, especially in a smaller county, deserves a second look before it becomes a headline. The Bureau of Labor Statistics itself schedules a new county release every quarter (the next covering Q1 2026 is due August 28, 2026), which means anyone relying on this piece should check whether Galveston and Montgomery have held their lead or been overtaken by the time a newer release is available. Comparing two or three consecutive quarters, rather than one, is the more reliable way to tell a genuine trend from a one-quarter blip caused by a single large employer’s payroll change.
Rising pay against rising prices
None of the percentage gains above account for inflation. A 5.9 percent nominal wage gain in Galveston or Montgomery County is smaller in real terms once local price growth is subtracted, so it is worth checking wage gains against the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ regional Consumer Price Index releases for the nearest metro area before concluding a county’s workers are meaningfully better off than a year ago.
How to check your own county
The full dataset behind this piece, all 254 Texas counties, both large and small, is public. The County Employment and Wages release for Texas is published quarterly by the BLS Southwest Information Office and lists the wage level and, for large counties, the year-over-year percent change for each one. For an occupation-level view rather than a county-level one, the Texas OEWS wage tables let you compare a specific job’s median pay against an earlier year’s release, and the Texas Workforce Commission’s Texas Labor Analysis tool lets you filter the same underlying figures by region.
The one-line version: Texas wage growth right now is not a single statewide number, it is Galveston and Montgomery counties out front at 5.9 percent, a wide middle tier of large counties between roughly 2 and 5 percent, and the Permian Basin’s Ector and Midland counties trailing behind amid a softer drilling market, all drawn from the same free, quarterly federal release.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
