How much of a "company town" is your city -- and is that good or bad?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by cabasse

interesting list, but curious about a couple of the weak options - new york, chicago, boston? what differentiates these from the rest of the agnostic list? (actually i suppose all in the weak list - i thought all of these were fairly diverse)

NYC, Chicago, and Boston all lean on financial services. Those are all cities with diverse economies, but agnostic cities don't seem to have industries with more influence than others. For instance, the largest private employers in Atlanta are Home Depot, Delta, UPS, and Coca Cola. in NYC, the largest are Verizon, JP Morgan, Citi, and MetLife; a clear slant to financial services.

[Steely Dan]

^ if largest private employers is the metric, then Chicago isn't that heavy on financial services.

It's pretty balanced, actually, with only 1 financial services company in the top 10. probably should be on the agnostic list.

Top 10 largest private employers in chicago:

1. Advocate (healthcare)
2. JP Morgan Chase
3. U. Of Chicago (mostly in their hospital system)
4. United Airlines
5. AT&T
6. Walgreens's
7. Abbott (pharmaceuticals)
8. Presence (healthcare)
9. Northwestern memorial (hospital system)
10. American Airlines

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chicago

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ if largest private employers is the metric, then Chicago isn't that heavy on financial services.

It's pretty balanced, actually, with only 1 financial services company in the top 10. probably should be on the agnostic list.

Top 10 largest private employers in chicago:

1. Advocate (healthcare)
2. JP Morgan Chase
3. U. Of Chicago (mostly in their hospital system)
4. United Airlines
5. AT&T
6. Walgreens's
7. Abbott (pharmaceuticals)
8. Presence (healthcare)
9. Northwestern memorial (hospital system)
10. American Airlines

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chicago

That makes sense. Chicago seems more agnostic than NYC for sure.

I didn't put any data behind the list I put together but I would exclude government, schools, and healthcare systems, as those tend to be top employers in any market. I might try to redo the list using that criteria sooner or later.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I didn't put any data behind the list I put together but I would exclude government, schools, and healthcare systems, as those tend to be top employers in any market.

Omitting all government, education, and healthcare entities for Chicago, the top 10 employers are:

1. JP Morgan Chase (finance)
2. United Airlines (transportation)
3. AT&T Illinois (telecom)
4. Walgreens's (retail)
5. Abbott (pharmaceuticals)
6. American Airlines (transportation)
7. Jewel-Osco (retail)
8. Allstate (insurance)
9. Aon (insurance)
10. Walmart (retail)

Chicago really is an all-arounder, jack of all trades, master of none, kind of economy.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Omitting all government, education, and healthcare entities for Chicago, the top 10 employers are:

1. JP Morgan Chase (finance)
2. United Airlines (transportation)
3. AT&T Illinois (telecom)
4. Walgreens's (retail)
5. Abbott (pharmaceuticals)
6. American Airlines (transportation)
7. Jewel-Osco (retail)
8. Allstate (insurance)
9. Aon (insurance)
10. Walmart (retail)

Chicago really is an all-arounder, jack of all trades, master of none, kind of economy.

You actually shouldn't omit govt, education, and healthcare of any metro, since they impact the economy. For example, capital cities have more impact from local and state govt, and a small city like Rochester, MN certainly would be impacted if the Mayo Clinic ran into financial difficulty (and maybe even Houston if its Texas Medical Center went bust). That being said, Chicago is more 'agnostic' with a wide range of businesses and industries, so one industry trouble would not impact it as much.

[jd3189]

Healthcare is big in every city but I wonder which cities really depend upon it as a higher percentage of their jobs.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Healthcare is big in every city but I wonder which cities really depend upon it as a higher percentage of their jobs.

So is retail. Usually a healthcare facility and a grocery store are within the top 3 employers of most metros. But some cities seem to have big mega clusters within a specific campus. For healthcare, Rochester MN's Mayo Clinic is a cluster employing 42K employees, twenty times more than the next listed employer per Wiki. I believe the Texas Medical Center employs over 100K and the Cleveland Clinic employs over 50K (Wiki says 55K in Ohio and I suspect most are in Cleveland).

[JManc]

Over 100,000 people work in the Texas Medical Center with countless more ancillary jobs associated with that. Total employed in the Houston area is about 3.5 million so not an insignificant percentage.

[Crawford]

I feel like a lot of this is Chamber of Commerce stuff. If TMC had 50k employees, instead of 100k, it wouldn't mean the medical sector would be less important to Houston, it just means the regional health system is more consolidated, as medical jobs are largely a function of population. Everyone gets sick and dies. I noticed this in Cleveland, where everything, everywhere is Cleveland Clinic.

And yeah, I get there are global 1% types who visit prestigious medical centers for specialized treatments, but that isn't any medical center's bread and butter. Your everyday bloodwork & MRIs and the like are locals. You don't fly from abroad for a colonoscopy.

[ColDayMan]

Columbus is not a company town by any stretch. The government (state and federal) obviously are the largest employers but they aren't even 10% of the metro employment overall.

Cincinnati is also not a company town as I believe the largest employers are GE Aviation and Kroger and combined only make up like 8% of the metro.

Dayton, though, is arguably a "company" town with Wright-Patterson AFB making a significant portion of employment and its branches (drone companies, healthcare, Air Force law firms, banking, etc).

[craigs]

Here are the ten largest private employers in Los Angeles County (Source):

1 Kaiser Permanente 40,303
2 University of Southern California 22,735
3 Northrop Grumman Corp. 18,000
4 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center 16,659
5 Target Corp. 15,888
6 Allied Universal 15,326
7 Providence Health and Services Southern California 14,935
8 Ralphs/Food 4 Less (Kroger Co. Division) 14,000
9 Walmart 14,000
10 Walt Disney Co. 12,200*

And here are the 10 largest public employers in Los Angeles County (Source):

1 County of Los Angeles 100,800
2 Los Angeles Unified School District 90,900
3. City of Los Angeles 68,300
4. University of California, Los Angeles 51,700
5. Federal Government - All Agencies Except Defense & State 44,600
6. State of California (non-education) 33,900
7. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority 12,900
8. Long Beach Unified School District 11,900
9. Los Angeles Community College District 11,100
10. City of Long Beach 6,700

*The Walt Disney Co. listing is for the media and entertainment divisions, not the amusement park down in Orange County.

[dave8721]

Top 3 private employers in Miami-Dade County are:
University of Miami: 13k
Baptist Health: 11,353
American Airlines: 11,031
..huge drop off
Carnival Cruises: 3500
Miami Children's Hospital: 3500
Mount Sinai: 3321
Royal Caribbean: 3000


The 4 biggest employers over all are all public:
Miami-Dade Public Schools: 34k
Miami-Dade County: 26k
Federal Government: 19k
Florida Government: 17k
Jackson Health System: 10k
City of Miami: 4k
FIU: 3500
Homestead Air Reserve Base: 3250 (I would think these would just be Federal?)

Interesting to note the difference in Economic impact of the University of Miami vs FIU despite FIU have like a 4 or 5 times larger student body. U of Miami has a health system, research hospitals...etc.

[mhays]

Most healthcare jobs exist to support the local population. The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, and a few others are probably exceptions where a large percentage of its customer base is from out of town. Most big cities will have clinics or categories that are the best in the world or the US in some slice of the pie, like a certain treatment or type of cancer. A few can say this in a wider range of areas.

The BEA stats seem to omit healthcare breakouts much of the time, so it's not useful for comparing cities.

I've seen no number suggesting that some cities have dramatically higher healthcare employment. Maybe they exist. I've asked for sources before and it's been crickets (or irrelevancies followed by crickets).

[Xelebes]

Edmonton was literally a company town for its first 100 years. Less so these days.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by pj3000

All cities are "company towns", but actual company towns... founded, designed, built by a company... there are tons, but these off the top of my head:

- Lawrence Park, PA -- General Electric
- Ambridge, PA -- American Bridge
- Ford City, PA -- PPG
- Windber, PA -- Berwind-White Coal
- Apollo, PA & Vandergrift, PA -- Apollo Iron & Steel
- Hershey, PA -- Hershey
- Wilmerding, PA -- Westinghouse
- Natrona, PA --Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing
- Weirton, WV -- Weirton Steel
- Pullman, IL -- Pullman

Monsanto, IL = Sauget, IL now...obviously chemicals then and chemicals (and stripclubs) now.
Granite City, IL which was named for Graniteware kitchen utensils. It was their steel making company town.
I could probably keep on going with industrial villages built around a steelmill/refinery/etc in the metro east.

[UrbanImpact]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Healthcare is big in every city but I wonder which cities really depend upon it as a higher percentage of their jobs.

I'm going to guess Rochester, MN with the Mayo Clinic and Baltimore, MD with John Hopkins would be at the the top of that list.

[Streamliner]

For San Diego I'd say no. People say that San Diego is a one-industry town, but then they disagree whether that industry is tourism or military.

The City used to be more military-focused, which turned out poorly after the Cold War ended. But the region is much more diverse now. The region's military history has led to a large modern day private aerospace/defense sector. It's also a very large biotech hub, and a fairly large tech presence. Of course tourism is very large as well

[mhays]

The BEA stats include categories for military and federal-non-military pay.

In 2022, Seattle's three-county area had a little over $4b in local uniformed payroll out of $372 total. That omits most of the Navy across the Sound. In the OP I shared the opinion that this is a linchpin of the local economy.

San Diego was nearly $10b (uniformed only) out of $244b. Add the non-informed side ($7b for all federal jobs, many being Navy), plus a multiplier effect, and the Navy would be a huge component of the economy -- not the part that shuffles local money, but the part that brings money to the area.

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by pj3000

All cities are "company towns", but actual company towns... founded, designed, built by a company... there are tons, but these off the top of my head:

- Lawrence Park, PA -- General Electric
- Ambridge, PA -- American Bridge
- Ford City, PA -- PPG
- Windber, PA -- Berwind-White Coal
- Apollo, PA & Vandergrift, PA -- Apollo Iron & Steel
- Hershey, PA -- Hershey
- Wilmerding, PA -- Westinghouse
- Natrona, PA --Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing
- Weirton, WV -- Weirton Steel
- Pullman, IL -- Pullman

Aklavik - Hudson Bay Company
Battleford, North Battleford - Hudson Bay Company
Churchill - Hudson Bay Company
Cumberland House - Hudson Bay Company
Edmonton - Hudson Bay Company
Fernie - Crowsnest Pass Coal Company
Flin Flon - Hudson Bay Mining And Smelting
Fort Chipewyan - North West Company
Fort McMurray - Hudson Bay Company
Fort Simpson - Hudson Bay Company
Kamloops - Pacific Fur Company
Langley - Pacific Fur Company
Lethbridge - Fort Whoop-Up (Healy & Hamilton)
Nanaimo - Hudson Bay Company
North Edmonton (now Belvedere area) - Burns Packing
Prince Albert - Hudson Bay Company
Prince George - Hudson Bay Company
Prince Rupert - Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Rocky Mountain House - Hudson Bay Company
Smithers - Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Thunder Bay - North West Company
Timmins - Hollinger Mines
Vanderhoof - Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
Vernon - Pacific Fur Company
Victoria - Hudson Bay Company
Winnipeg - Hudson Bay Company
Yellowknife - Cominco

[pdxtex]

Portland is a pretty mixed economy so I wouldn't call it a company town. Our biggest employer is also a health care system which is in the middle of a merger so it will be even bigger. Since Nike is here, we also attract its competitors. Adidas North America has their headquarters here in a old Kaiser hospital.