El Paso vs Jacksonville: which should you move to?

On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in El Paso went from 1,794 in 2021 to 2,109 in 2022, 2,134 in 2023 and a peak of 2,170 in 2024, then 1,969 in 2025, a 9% drop in the last year that still leaves the count 10% above 2021. Property offenses went from 8,882 to 9,440 and a peak of 11,061 in 2023, then 10,246 and 9,152, 17% below the peak. Motor vehicle theft drove much of the swing: 994 in 2021, 2,314 in 2023 and 1,805 in 2025. In 2025 the CDE shows aggravated assaults down 10% (1,628 to 1,467), robberies down 11% (255 to 226), rapes down 6% (267 to 250), burglaries down 19% (959 to 773) and larcenies down 11%, while murders (20 to 26) and arsons (69 to 78) rose. EPPD's own count of the eight offenses, as reported to the state, fell 11% in 2025, but El Paso Matters found it was the only one of Texas's 25 largest law enforcement agencies to report more serious crime in 2025 than in 2021, after rises in 2022 and 2023. The 2025 CDE counts were read on 30 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 1,969 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the El Paso Police Department (ORI TX0710200) in calendar 2025, divided by the 683,012 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 682,310 the rate is 289. That is the lowest of any US city this site compares, against 375 in Fort Worth, 532 in San Antonio, 577 in Dallas and 890 in Houston, and below Miami's 359. EPPD's own figures, as reported to the Texas Department of Public Safety and summarized by El Paso Matters, put violent crime 10% lower in 2025 than in 2024, in line with the CDE's 9% drop.

Homicides: 26 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, against 20 in 2024, about 3.8 per 100,000 on the city population, half Fort Worth's rate and a third of Houston's. El Paso Matters, reading the department's report to the state, also has murder rising in 2025, one of only two of the eight tracked offenses that did, with arson. The CDE series is small and uneven: 33 in 2021, 22 in 2022, 37 in 2023, 20 in 2024 and 26 in 2025.

On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in Jacksonville went from 6,496 in 2021 to 6,141 in 2022 and 6,513 in 2023, then fell to 5,680 in 2024 and 5,231 in 2025, 8% lower than in 2024 and 19% lower than in 2021. Property offenses rose from 23,968 in 2021 to a peak of 26,443 in 2024 and fell 17% in 2025 to 21,920. Motor vehicle theft drove the swing: 2,035 in 2021, 3,461 in 2024 and 2,036 in 2025, down 41% in the last year. In 2025 the CDE shows aggravated assaults down 7% (4,533 to 4,236), robberies down 16% (639 to 539), rapes down 16% (445 to 376), burglaries down 22% and larcenies down 12%, while murders rose from 63 to 80, the one violent measure that went up. The sheriff's office cleared 55% of 2025's murders against 73% of 2024's, as Action News Jax reported from JSO records. The 2025 CDE counts were read on 1 October 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.

What the rates cover: Computed: 5,231 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (ORI FL0160000) in calendar 2025, divided by the 1,017,689 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 1,008,920 the rate is 518. The sheriff's office, formed when the city and county police merged in 1968, is responsible for law enforcement in the county; Jacksonville Beach has its own department. That is higher than Miami (359), Tampa (375.5) and Fort Worth (375), close to Boston (507) and below San Antonio (532), Dallas (577) and Houston (890).

Homicides: 80 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, against 63 in 2024, about 7.9 per 100,000 on the city population. The sheriff's office's own counts differ slightly by date and definition: Action News Jax, reading JSO records, reported 76 murders in 2025 against 63 in 2024, and News4JAX reported 79 murder cases in 2025 within more than 100 homicides of all kinds, including 11 fatal police shootings. The 2024 figure was the low point: News4JAX's count of 82 homicides of all kinds that year was the lowest in the 19 years it has kept one. The CDE series is 107 in 2021, 132 in 2022, 128 in 2023, 63 in 2024 and 80 in 2025.

BLS counted 363,500 nonfarm jobs in the El Paso MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 3,200 or 0.9% on the year. Professional and business services grew fastest (+3.5%, to 44,500), then leisure and hospitality (+2.5%, to 44,600), construction and mining (+1.8%) and manufacturing (+1.1%, to 18,400), while information (-4.5%) and local government (-1.3%, to 47,000) shrank and private education and health services held at 56,000. Unlike in Fort Worth and San Antonio, federal employment rose, 3.0% to 13,800; BLS's payroll count does not include active-duty soldiers. Trade, transportation and utilities is the largest sector at 80,200 jobs and government the second at 70,900. The seasonally adjusted series (SMS48213400000000001) was 365,200 in August 2026, 1.2% above August 2025. The Texas Comptroller counts 41,527 direct employees at Fort Bliss in 2025 and estimates the base supported 121,220 Texas jobs and $17.3 billion of the state's GDP ($29.1 billion of output). The border is the other half of the economy: in 2025 the Bureau of Transportation Statistics counted 13.1 million personal vehicle passengers and 5.4 million pedestrians entering at the El Paso port, second on the Mexican border only to San Ysidro for both, and 641,729 trucks at Ysleta-Zaragoza, fourth after Laredo, Otay Mesa and Hidalgo. The largest new investment is Meta's AI data center in Northeast El Paso, a $10 billion project as El Paso Matters described it in May 2026, which the city expects to become its largest property taxpayer, at about $15 million a year once fully built in 2028, with 300 permanent jobs (El Paso Matters).

Main sectors: Military and federal government: Fort Bliss, home of the 1st Armored Division, the largest installation in the Army's Forces Command, with 41,527 direct employees in 2025 (30,288 of them active-duty), and the federal border agencies (US Border Patrol's El Paso Sector, Customs and Border Protection, the El Paso Intelligence Center), Health care (University Medical Center of El Paso and the El Paso County Hospital District, Texas Tech Health El Paso, William Beaumont Army Medical Center), Cross-border trade, transportation and logistics with Ciudad Juárez and its export factories, the metro's largest sector by payroll jobs (80,200 in August 2026), The ports of entry: the downtown Paso del Norte, Stanton Street and Bridge of the Americas crossings, Ysleta-Zaragoza and Tornillo, which together took 842,659 trucks and 28.8 million people into the US in 2025, Education and local government (UTEP, El Paso Community College and the El Paso, Ysleta and Socorro school districts); government is the metro's second-largest sector at 70,900 jobs.

Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Texas's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 1.40%, and school districts must exempt $140,000 of a homestead's value from their tax. On 18 August 2026 a divided City Council adopted a $658.6 million general fund budget for fiscal 2027 and a rate of 79.8 cents per $100 of taxable value, both 6 to 2, which El Paso Matters says will raise the city's bill on the average-value home by about $105; the council had adopted the no-new-revenue rate every year before 2025, and the city manager's proposal at the voter-approval rate would have added $132. The county adopted its no-new-revenue rate of 45.1 cents, about $41 more on a $229,637 home, and the hospital district proposed its no-new-revenue rate of 23.7 cents. El Paso's rates are among the highest of Texas's big counties, but its home values are among the lowest: an El Paso Matters analysis of Tax Foundation and Census data found the county's median property tax bill took 6.1% of median household income in 2024, about the same share as in most large Texas counties and less than in Travis County, where the median bill was 111% higher. The county, school district, hospital district, community college and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.

BLS counted 803,800 nonfarm jobs in the Jacksonville MSA in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up only 500 on the year, almost flat. Private education and health services grew fastest (+3.3%, to 139,800) and professional and business services next (+2.0%, to 120,100), while financial activities lost 4,400 jobs (-6.1%, to 67,800), finance and insurance alone 3,000, and information fell 8.2% to 13,400. Government shrank 2.5% to 77,900, almost all of it federal (-8.4%, from 20,300 to 18,600); BLS's payroll count does not include active-duty sailors. Trade, transportation and utilities is the largest sector at 170,000 jobs, and leisure and hospitality held at 93,900. The seasonally adjusted series (SMS12272600000000001) was 806,600 in August 2026, 0.4% above August 2025. JAXPORT moved 1,388,841 TEUs of containers in fiscal 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), up 4% on the year, 506,237 vehicles and 10.2 million tons of cargo, and says its cargo supports more than 258,800 jobs and $44 billion of annual economic impact in the region and state; a $250 million modernization of Blount Island's container and auto terminals was completed in 2025. The state's 2024 defense summary, on 2022 figures, puts defense spending in Duval County at $6.5 billion and its total impact at $9.1 billion, 68,060 jobs and 10.4% of the county's economy.

Main sectors: Port, rail and logistics: JAXPORT, Florida's No. 1 container port by volume (nearly 1.39 million TEUs and 506,237 vehicles in fiscal 2025), CSX and the Florida East Coast Railway, both headquartered in the city, and the shipping lines to Puerto Rico (Crowley, TOTE Maritime, Trailer Bridge), The Navy: Naval Air Station Jacksonville, the largest installation in Navy Region Southeast, Naval Station Mayport, home of the Fourth Fleet and 21 ships, and Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island; defense spending has a $9.1 billion total economic impact in Duval County, Finance, insurance and financial technology (FIS and Fidelity National Financial, both headquartered in the city, Florida Blue, and Deutsche Bank's second-largest US operation), a sector now shrinking, Health care (Mayo Clinic Florida, Baptist Health and Wolfson Children's Hospital, UF Health Jacksonville, St. Vincent's), the metro's fastest-growing large sector, Trade, transportation and utilities, the metro's largest sector by payroll jobs (170,000 in August 2026).

Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Florida's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 0.78%, and a homestead exemption takes as much as $50,000 off a permanent residence's taxable value, with the Save Our Homes limit on how fast its assessment can rise (Florida Department of Revenue). On 22 September 2026 the City Council adopted a $2 billion budget for fiscal 2027, 18 to 1, and kept the consolidated government's rate at 11.1919 mills, about $11.19 per $1,000 of taxable value, on a 16 to 3 vote; The four towns that kept their own governments pay a different city rate (7.9012 mills at the Beaches, 9.4208 in Baldwin). Council and mayor held the rate rather than cut it because of Amendment 3, the homestead property tax cut on Florida's 3 November 2026 ballot, which the city expects would open a revenue shortfall of about $300 million by 2028 if it passes, and tied some spending to its outcome (Jacksonville Today). School board and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.

Health care

Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Texas is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). It had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024: 16.7%, or 5,152,427 of 30,799,312 people, against 8.2% nationally and 12.0% in Georgia, the next highest, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates. The City of El Paso's rate was 20.8% (138,104 of 665,393), El Paso County's 21.5% and the metro's 21.5%. University Medical Center of El Paso, run by the El Paso County Hospital District, is the county's only public hospital and the region's only Level I trauma center; it has 394 licensed beds and in fiscal 2024 counted 97,326 emergency visits and more than a million outpatient visits. The district, which also runs El Paso Children's Hospital, has budgeted $136 million of uncompensated care for fiscal 2027 on a $2.1 billion budget, citing the end of the enhanced ACA subsidies, and voters approved a $397 million bond for it in 2024 (El Paso Matters). UMC is the teaching hospital of Texas Tech Health El Paso, formerly Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, independent since 2013, whose Paul L. Foster School of Medicine was the first four-year medical school on the US-Mexico border; it also runs schools of nursing, biomedical sciences and dental medicine, the last of which took its first class in 2021, and is planning the Fox Cancer Center, which it calls the first comprehensive cancer center in far West Texas. William Beaumont Army Medical Center, the Army hospital at Fort Bliss, moved into a new 1.1-million-square-foot complex on East Fort Bliss in July 2021 and runs the emergency department for Northeast El Paso (Wikipedia). This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

Four school districts cover parts of the city, El Paso ISD, Ysleta ISD, Socorro ISD and Canutillo ISD, and nine serve the county (Wikipedia). All of them are shrinking: El Paso County lost almost 12,000 residents aged 5 to 18 between 2020 and 2025, 6.6%, and the three largest districts had about 124,000 students in 2025-26, 13% fewer than seven years earlier (El Paso Matters). El Paso ISD lost almost 1,900 students in 2025-26 against a budgeted 1,000, ran a $52.8 million deficit, and on 4 June 2026 its board declared financial exigency to cut about 410 jobs, after which two trustees resigned; it has postponed a bond election to May 2027. Ysleta ISD adopted a budget that nearly empties its savings. The University of Texas at El Paso, an R1 research university, has 26,297 students, 85% of them Hispanic and half the first in their families to attend college, and calls itself the leading Hispanic-serving university in the country. El Paso Community College, with five campuses, enrolled 25,563 credit students in fall 2024, 81.7% of them Hispanic (EPCC Fact Book). Texas Tech Health El Paso trains doctors, nurses and dentists beside UMC.

Living there

El Paso is the only city this site compares on the Mexican border, the only one in the desert, and the only Texas city here on Mountain time, an hour behind the rest of the state, half of a metropolis whose larger half, Ciudad Juárez, is across the Rio Grande: 28.8 million people crossed into the US at its three ports in 2025. It is also the one Texas city here that is not growing. It lost 2,219 residents in 2024-25, the most of any city in the state, and has grown 0.6% since 2020, as births fall, fewer people move up from Mexico and young adults leave for better pay; household income, at $59,932, is the lowest of any city this site compares, and 20.8% of residents have no health insurance. Fort Bliss and the border agencies anchor the economy, with health care, trade and the schools. Its violent crime rate, 288 per 100,000 on the FBI's counts for 2025, is the lowest of any US city here, with 26 homicides. It is built for the car, with 0.9% of workers on a bus network that runs four Brio rapid lines and a free downtown streetcar. The climate is the driest and sunniest here, with 8.78 in of rain a year, and the hottest summers are recent ones: 70 days at 100F in 2023 and 108 straight days at 90F or above in 2026. The open questions are water and money: the Rio Grande reservoir that supplies nearly half the city's water fell to 1.4% of capacity in July 2026, a divided council raised the city's property tax rate in August, El Paso ISD declared financial exigency in June as enrollment falls, and the city is counting on Meta's data center, due to become its largest property taxpayer, to take some of the load off homeowners.

Health care

Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Florida is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act; an organizing committee relaunched a ballot initiative to expand it in February 2026 (KFF). Florida's uninsured rate was 10.9% in 2024 (2,509,782 of 23,038,464), the sixth-highest of any state, against 8.2% nationally, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates; the City of Jacksonville's was 10.1% (99,720 of 990,245), Duval County's 9.9% and the metro's 8.2%. UF Health Jacksonville, the University of Florida's academic hospital downtown with 695 beds and another 216 at UF Health North, is home to North Florida's Level I trauma center and carries the city's safety-net care: the fiscal 2027 city budget carries $56 million for its indigent care (Jacksonville Today). Mayo Clinic's Florida campus on the Southside, Mayo's first outside Rochester, opened in 1986 and has a hospital Wikipedia gives 304 beds, with an expansion to 428 announced for 2026. Baptist Health runs Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville and, beside it on the downtown riverfront, the 281-bed Wolfson Children's Hospital, the region's only Level I pediatric trauma center verified by the American College of Surgeons. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.

Education

Duval County Public Schools, whose boundaries match the county's, has fallen below 100,000 students this fall for the first time in modern history, a 16% decline since 2015, when it had more than 115,000, as charter schools, homeschooling and state scholarships for private tuition grew (Action News Jax, 30 September 2026). It cut 115 teaching positions in September 2025 after a 1.9% drop in enrollment, closed several elementary schools that summer under its 2024 master facilities plan, and is consolidating four more in 2026-27, with two others delayed to 2027-28 and 2028-29. The University of North Florida, a public R2 research university founded in 1965 on the Southside, enrolled 16,575 students in 2024 (Florida Board of Governors). Jacksonville University, private, in Arlington, enrolled 4,247 in fall 2024 and has what Wikipedia calls the second-largest Naval ROTC program in the country. Florida State College at Jacksonville, the state college with campuses across the city, enrolled 23,556 students in 2024-25 (IPEDS, as compiled by UnivStats), 70% of them part time. Edward Waters University, founded in 1866, is the state's oldest historically Black college, and the city has committed $130 million to a new University of Florida graduate campus (Jacksonville Today).

Living there

Jacksonville is the largest city by land area in the contiguous United States, 747 square miles, because in 1968 it consolidated with Duval County and took in almost all of it; it is Florida's largest city by a wide margin and the eleventh-largest in the country, yet its metro is the smallest of the four Florida metros this site compares, and half the metro's growth since 2020 has been in St. Johns and Nassau counties rather than the city. The St. Johns River runs north through the middle of it to the Atlantic, and the river is both the economy and the risk: JAXPORT, Florida's busiest container port, and the Navy's bases at NAS Jacksonville and Mayport line it, and Irma in 2017 pushed it to its highest recorded level downtown. It is the coolest of the Florida cities here after Tallahassee, with real if brief winters, and hurricanes rarely hit it directly. It is built for the car: 70.9% of workers drive alone and 0.8% take transit, and the transit agency is cutting service, halting the Skyway and ending its autonomous shuttle in a budget crisis. Violent crime, at 514 per 100,000 on the FBI's counts, is higher than in Miami or Tampa. Household income, at $72,389, sits in the middle of the Florida cities, and Florida takes no income tax. The open questions are the transit agency's finances, a shrinking school district, the November 2026 homestead tax vote the city has budgeted against, and whether finance jobs, down 6.1% in a year, keep leaving.