Doing Business in Williamson County, Texas

New business applications in Williamson County went from 6,432 in 2019 to 13,247 in 2025. That is a straight line from the U.S. Census Bureau’s own business formation data, and it means people are starting companies here at roughly double the rate they were six years ago.

This is the county that includes Round Rock, Georgetown, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Hutto, Taylor, Liberty Hill, and Jarrell. Dell has been headquartered in Round Rock since 1994. Samsung is building one of the largest semiconductor investments in U.S. history in Taylor. Underneath the headline names, more than 15,000 employer establishments run payroll here, together paying out $13.51 billion a year.

The growth is real, and it is not slowing down

Williamson County’s population hit 752,827 as of mid-2025, up from 609,017 in the 2020 Census. That is 23.6% growth in five years. The county added 23,814 residents in the most recent 12-month period the Census Bureau tracked, the ninth-highest raw number of any county in the country.

SmartAsset’s 2026 Boomtowns ranking, which looked at housing and labor-force growth across more than 400 U.S. cities, put Georgetown at #1 nationally. Leander landed at #4. Cedar Park, Round Rock, and Pflugerville all made the list too. SmartAsset also found Williamson County’s economic output grew at a 7.7% compound annual rate, the highest of any county in the United States.

None of that is a projection. It already happened.

Who is already here

Dell has run its global headquarters out of Round Rock since 1994. In April 2024 the city and Dell extended their original economic development agreement through 2099. Over the life of that agreement, Round Rock has collected more than $429 million in sales tax revenue tied to Dell, and the state of Texas has collected $2 billion. Dell employs 13,000 to 14,000 people locally, according to the Round Rock Chamber.

Samsung is building its Taylor semiconductor fab about 30 minutes from Round Rock. The project was announced in 2021 at $17 billion. By 2024, Samsung’s disclosed investment across its Central Texas campuses had grown to a reported $44 to $45 billion. The start date has moved more than once: in June 2026, the head of Samsung’s North American foundry operations said the Taylor fab will begin production in 2027. In 2025, Samsung’s Austin and Taylor operations together put $10.9 billion into the Central Texas economy and supported nearly 29,000 jobs.

Round Rock alone counts more than 4,000 businesses and 75,000-plus employees, including Emerson Automation Solutions, Toppan Photomasks, Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White, Amazon, and UPS. Georgetown’s employer base runs toward advanced manufacturing and healthcare, including St. David’s Georgetown Hospital and GAF Energy’s solar-shingle plant. Cedar Park is home to National Oilwell Varco, Firefly Aerospace, Hyliion, and James Avery Artisan Jewelry, with more than 40,000 jobs concentrated in aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing. Pflugerville and Hutto have become a data center corridor, anchored by Arista’s $210 million campus and a Skybox and Prologis project in Hutto tied to Samsung’s supply chain and estimated at roughly $10 billion.

What it costs to operate here

Texas has no personal state income tax. Businesses with annual revenue at or below $2.65 million owe no franchise tax for 2026 reports, though they still file an information report.

Property tax is the number that actually shows up in a local business’s budget, and the rates here are on the low end for the Austin metro. Rates are per $100 of taxable value.

Property tax rates per $100 of valuation
Taxing body	Rate	Note
Williamson County	$0.413776	2025 rate
Georgetown	$0.353	FY2026. The city says it is the lowest of any Austin-area city over 20,000 people
Cedar Park	$0.36	FY2025-26
Round Rock	$0.372	FY2025-26

For industrial and commercial space, the Round Rock, Hutto and Taylor corridor had 4 million square feet of industrial space under construction in Q1 2026, more than any other submarket in the Austin metro, with average asking industrial rent around $14.43 per square foot.

The workforce

Williamson County’s civilian labor force stood at 435,893 in July 2026, with an unemployment rate of 4.1% (not seasonally adjusted), according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Median household income is $111,340 (2020 to 2024 average), and 48.4% of adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The largest sectors by resident headcount are professional, scientific, and technical services (47,398 workers, and the highest-paying at a median $101,955), retail trade (41,642), and health care and social assistance (38,824).

City by city

Cities by population, with what drives each local economy
City	Population	What is there
Round Rock	141,282	The largest city and the economic anchor, built around Dell’s headquarters and a broad tech and healthcare employer base.
Georgetown	106,907	Ranked #1 in SmartAsset’s 2026 Boomtowns list. Advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and a historic downtown with its own tourism traffic.
Leander	91,132	Ranked #4 in the same list. Sits on the Highway 183 tech corridor.
Cedar Park	79,032	Also on the 183 corridor, with a heavier aerospace and defense manufacturing base.
Pflugerville	68,316	Straddles the Williamson-Travis line and has become one of the region’s fastest-growing data center markets.
Hutto	46,048	Grew with the same data center wave, with the Hutto Megasite anchoring a project tied to Samsung’s supply chain.
Taylor	18,402	Home of the Samsung semiconductor fab, the largest economic development project in the county’s history.
Liberty Hill	13,317	Up 276.6% since the 2020 Census, the fastest percentage growth of any city in the county.
Jarrell	5,870	A smaller, fast-growing community along the I-35 corridor.

Florence and Granger are smaller still, under 1,200 residents each, and neither has a significant standalone business district in available public data. They are small towns, not commercial centers, and this guide does not pretend otherwise.

What is coming

TxDOT and CAMPO approved $250 million to widen roughly 15 miles of SH 130 between Round Rock and Georgetown, with construction targeted to start in 2027.
The US 183A Toll extension opened a new 5-mile segment in April 2025 along the Leander and Cedar Park corridor.
A $250 million Amazon distribution center near Round Rock began operating in May 2026, adding 150 to 200 jobs.
Georgetown Municipal Airport is adding more than 125 hangars in two phases through 2026, plus a new aircraft maintenance facility.
Samsung’s Taylor fab is scheduled to begin production in 2027.

The bottom line

Growth here is not a talking point. The Census Bureau’s business formation numbers, the employment data, and the population counts all point the same direction: more people, more companies, and more investment, year after year, for most of the last decade.

We track the businesses actually operating across these cities, from the largest employers down to the plumbers, restaurants, and local service providers: 1,968 listings and counting.

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