High Tech Growth & Jobs for UofA Grads in NWA

Perhaps good news for UofA grads, especially those with technical background, wanting to remain in NWA rather than relocating elsewhere & outside of Arkansas. Too often recent UofA grads have wanted to remain in NWA to work but unable to do so due to lack of quality white collar jobs. Assume most of these openings are at Walmart, Tyson, JBHunt, & UofA.

I don’t subscribe, but I work at Walmart as a technical project manager. I can tell you that we are always hiring software engineers and we fight tooth and nail with JB Hunt and Tyson to get them. Most of these engineer positions start in the 90’s and engineers with a little experience earn well into the 100’s

My son is computer science/cyber engineer 2nd year in Ruston at LA Tech. These kids are getting crazy pursuit early for jobs in Texas and Shreveport (Barksdale loves these grads for cyber command)! Tech’s president told me last year he’d almost guarantee my son a starting job at $100k/year based on the offers this last spring out of his graduates.

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Is it expected that the new & expanded Walmart home campus that is under construction will add technical jobs to that location? I had read that it will enable Walmart to consolidate IT & other operational positions that are currently allocated around the country. That is similar move that Tyson recently announced.

My son recently graduated from UofA with Computer Business Applications degree & would like to relocate from DFW back to NWA to work.

Walmart will continue to have hubs throughout the country. What this allows, more than anything is all of NWA to be in one place. We are scattered all over NWA right now

Any idea when the Walmart HQ will be completed? Driving up Sat to house shop in Fayetteville & not sure that I will have time to drive up to Bentonville.

they keep saying 2025

This was the crux of the BOT deadlock for the new chancellor. The Waltons foundation has worked for 10 years to improve NWA’s status as a tech hub. Including hiring Austin’s city planner.
The Walton’s and half the board supported hiring the Utah faculty member to embrace a tech focus at the UA. After a lot of negotiations they went with the now chancellor because he “gets us”.

Time will tell whether that hampers NWA’s continued growth

Affordable housing will continue to be the issue. It will take two of those high paying jobs to find the kind of house most of these kids figure they deserve.

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Friend of mine here in Austin had a son graduate from Baylor with a Computer Information Systems two years ago. His first job out of college was with JB Hunt making $68K living in Fayetteville.

You are sure right about that. What with Tyson bringing down a thousand plus corporate jobs from Dakota Dunes and Chicago, and these are high paying positions, I don’t think there are enough houses to keep up. I know I have had numerous anonymous cash offers to buy my house over the past year. If I were in the market to buy my own house, I couldn’t afford it.

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We built our house out in a neighborhood in Goshen. The lots are 2.5 acres; My wife and I have worked 25+ years to be able to afford what we built. We did good on the sale of our LR house and we’ve saved so we’re in good shape on it. What I am amazed by though is the number of young people in our neighborhood with younger kids. I have no idea how they afford it and I know it’s really none of my business. I don’t want to speculate. I just know when my son was 3 I couldn’t afford it and I thought I had a good job.

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Only 30% moved here for Tyson. There’s probably another 40% redundancy in the jobs they were bringing here so maybe 300_400 actually hired. Still a big number

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bring plenty of cash if you find a house you like…had some good friends who moved there last year and finally got a house last month…they were constantly outbid on the houses they liked…until the last one…the market is that competitive

My folks just downsized a few months ago, moved from a big place on Beaver up by the dam into a smaller house in Fayetteville on flat ground, and had to pay a little over $200/sqft. If you think Fayetteville’s bad try to buy something in South Florida.

We’re bad enough here in the River Valley. 200+ for new and my subs want 40/Hr just to work. The bills I have to give my customers are just hard for me to believe. My wife says she wouldn’t pay Leonard that, and I tell her to go hire a plumber and put in a sink. We did that and 2 hours work was 180 bucks.

Try to by something in Austin right now. Price gains and sales have slowed considerably as interests rates have gone up but it is still ridiculous here. Our house doubled in value in less than three years.

Assume your property tax will also double soon, subject to the 10%/yr cap.

Yep…Our mortgage already reflects the increase…and also our homeowners insurance is creeping up.

Already hit hard with property tax increases here in Plano, TX which have almost tripled over the last 20 yrs. Sad that fixed income retirees must sell their long term homes in retirement due to high taxes. Texas calls itself a tax friendly state, but it is anything but that with the tax burden falling on homeowners subsidizing big corporations. That may be in part why many Texans are looking to live & retire in NWA.