Cities › TX
Austin
Mayor Kirk Watson · Democratic · in office since Jan. 6, 2023
The Executive Summary
Mayor Kirk Watson (D) has led Austin since Jan. 2023; Austin is not yet scored — a mayor's record opens only after enough years in office for the lagged data to say anything fair; the card below says exactly where each metric stands.
| Unemployment 3.3% (2025) | +1.14σ* · -5.71%/yr vs peers +5.13%/yr · 2024–2025 (2 pts) |
| Median household income $90,430 (2024 · constant 2024 $) | Not yet scored |
| Poverty rate 11.8% (2024) | Not yet scored |
| Government form | Council-manager |
Austin has 1 of 3 categories scored — an overall rating needs all 3, and the rest do not yet have enough years inside Kirk Watson's scoring window.
Sources: unemployment — BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics · median household income — Census ACS 1-year, CPI-U deflated · poverty rate — Census ACS 1-year (B17001). Unemployment runs through 2025; income and poverty through 2024. The 2025 unemployment point is an eleven-month average — October 2025 was never collected during the federal shutdown — and it is included and flagged here under the same rule the state pages apply to the same statistic (one statistic, one rulebook, as of v2.6; through v2.5 city pages excluded it instead, and the changelog says so).
Scored on economic outcomes only — unemployment, real median income and poverty. Crime, housing and health are not yet included, so this is a narrower measure than a governor’s. *Thin data — a trend fitted through fewer than 3 points is a line between dots, not a track record; percentage-per-year figures on those rows swing hard on small changes. Government form follows standard reference classifications and was not verified city by city. Methodology
Public safety, monthly — the city’s own record
Hate/bias-crime incidents reported by the Austin Police Department via the City of Austin Open Data Portal (dataset t99n-5ib4), counted by the city’s own published bias motives and compared same months only — January–July of each year, because the record currently runs through July 2026. Counts are small and reporting-sensitive; they are shown in both directions, never scored, and never part of Watson’s grade or any other. This module exists for every city whose government publishes a qualifying official feed — no feed, no module, no inferred number.
| Bias motive | Jan–Jul 2023 | Jan–Jul 2024 | Jan–Jul 2025 | Jan–Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All bias motives | 25 | 30 | 39 | 16 |
| Anti-Gay (Male) | 9 | 7 | 6 | 4 |
| Anti-Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (Mixed Group) | 5 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| All other motives | 11 | 21 | 33 | 9 |
Source: Austin Police Department via the City of Austin Open Data Portal (dataset t99n-5ib4), data through July 2026. An incident count is a report to the police, not a conviction, and a change in counts can reflect reporting as well as incidence — the city’s own caveats apply.
Austin sits in TX, whose governor Greg Abbott holds a scored statewide record (No. 22 of 29). State outcomes are not the mayor’s grade — a city is not a state — but they’re the nearest verified context today.