U.S. oil prices tumbled from more than $100 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to less than $50 a year later, but that didn't stop workers from flocking to Texas, the nation's biggest energy-producing state.
Eight of the top 20 counties that gained the most population last year were in Texas. Four Lone Star metros—Dallas, Houston (Harris County, in the chart below), San Antonio (Bexar County), and Austin (Travis County)—collectively added more than 412,000 people from July 2014 to July 2015, according to Census data published Thursday. Of those new residents, 63 percent had migrated from either elsewhere in the U.S. or from other countries.
