Austin, Texas
The Greater Austin metropolitan statistical area had a gross domestic product (GDP) of $86 billion in 2010. Austin is considered to be a major center for high tech. Thousands of graduates each year from the engineering and computer science programs at the University of Texas at Austin provide a steady source of employees that help to fuel Austin's technology and defense industry sectors. The region's rapid growth has led "Forbes" to rank the Austin metropolitan area number one among all big cities for jobs for 2012 in their annual survey and WSJ Marketwatch to rank the area number one for growing businesses. By 2013, Austin was ranked No. 14 on "Forbes"' list of the Best Places for Business and Careers (directly below Dallas, No. 13 on the list). As a result of the high concentration of high-tech companies in the region, Austin was strongly affected by the dot-com boom in the late 1990s and subsequent bust. Austin's largest employers include the Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Dell, the U.S. Federal Government, NXP Semiconductors, IBM, St. David's Healthcare Partnership, Seton Family of Hospitals, the State of Texas, the Texas State University, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Austin, Texas
Austin has been the location for a number of motion pictures, partly due to the influence of The University of Texas at Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film. Films produced in Austin include "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974), "Songwriter" (1984), "Man of the House", "Secondhand Lions", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2", "Nadine", "Waking Life", "Spy Kids", "The Faculty", "Dazed and Confused", "The Guards Themselves", "Wild Texas Wind", "Office Space", "The Life of David Gale", "Miss Congeniality", "Doubting Thomas", "Slacker", "Idiocracy", "The New Guy", "Hope Floats", "The Alamo", "Blank Check", "The Wendall Baker Story", "School of Rock", "A Slipping-Down Life", "A Scanner Darkly", "Saturday Morning Massacre", and most recently, the Coen brothers' "True Grit", "Grindhouse", "Machete", "How to Eat Fried Worms", "Bandslam" and "Lazer Team". In order to draw future film projects to the area, the Austin Film Society has converted several airplane hangars from the former Mueller Airport into filmmaking center Austin Studios. Projects that have used facilities at Austin Studios include music videos by The Flaming Lips and feature films such as "25th Hour" and "Sin City".