Texas' labor force keeps growing. Here are the 26 highest-paying jobs in the Lone Star State.

• Texas is seeing a strong labor market, with record-high employment figures.
• Business Insider looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics data to check out how pay looks in Texas.
• Texas' best-paying jobs are athletes and sports competitors, but around two dozen jobs pay over $175,000 on average.

Texas has a booming labor market.

April data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the state has a record-high number of people in the labor force and a record-high number of jobs.

The unemployment rate in Texas had been consistently at 3.9% from June 2023 to March 2024. It had ticked up to 4.0% in April, but that's still a low rate, and the labor force participation rate also ticked up from 64.1% to 64.2% in April. The unemployment rate for Texas has been close to or at the national unemployment rate during 2024 so far. Plus, the state added 42,600 jobs in April, which is a robust gain compared to most of the monthly gains for this state in 2023.

Amid a robust job market and with over 15.2 million people in the Texas labor force, Business Insider decided to look at what pay opportunities look like in the state based on recently published data.

Around two dozen jobs in Texas pay an average of over $175,000, including architectural and engineering managers, podiatrists, ophthalmologists, and athletes and other sports competitors.

That's based on average annual wage data from the May 2023 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics estimates published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BI focused on jobs that had data available for Texas from that release. While pediatric surgeon is a high-paying job in the state, we didn't include it in our ranking below because it didn't have a specific estimate stated.

Below are the highest-paying jobs in Texas along with their average annual wages and employment estimates in the state.