If you're being forced to move to a new city, either to be with a significant other or because your company wants you to go, you want to at least know a little bit about it. For instance, are the people who live there blue collar roughnecks who work on oil platforms or white collar hippies who work on computer software programs and buy organic produce for their families? This article is all about the city of Plano and how it fits into the greater Texas mold as far as industry goes. Hopefully it will answer your questions.

Texas, as a state, has both blue collar and white collar characteristics. Of its four top industries, two are blue collar and two are white collar. On the blue collar side there's agriculture and mining, which includes a lot of digging and using heavy machinery, and of course, energy, which mostly centers around oil. On the white collar end, there's the wheeling and dealing in the commerce industry and the software development and clean rooms of the technology industry. Of course, any core industry also necessitates the presence of a great many supplementary businesses.

Plano falls very much onto the white collar end of things. Business and technology are its stock in trade, so much so that the vast majority of people who visit Plano are there for business rather than pleasure. The types of business conducted in Plano ranges from retail to software development, but you won't find a lot of production facilities here. It's mostly headquarters offices full of paper pushing employees, which suits Plano's 'affluent suburb' image.

That's not to say there's no building being used in a manufacturing process anywhere in the city, just that it's not Plano's stock in trade. Broken down in terms of the number of employees, the retail industry is actually the largest in Plano, followed by health care, information, accommodation, and professional services. Smaller industries employing less than 10% of the workforce include manufacturing, administration, wholesaling, real estate, education, and the arts.

So if you get a job with Plano's largest employers, are you going to be marketing modern products or selling software overseas? Neither. Actually, you'll be processing loans and tracking clothing sales. The two largest employers are Bank of America Home Loans and J.C. Penny. Other large employers based in the city include HP Enterprise Services, Perot Systems (a Dell subsidiary), Frito Lay, and the Presbyterian Hospital of Plano.

Some businesses we know