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

[mhays]

Living in a company town can mean riding a roller coaster blindfolded -- big highs, big lows, and never knowing what's next. But the highs can last for decades, and the lows aren't necessarily that problematic.

Here's a question: How much is your city tied to a small number of big employers, or just a few sectors? How helpful or risky is that? Or are you glad your city is more diversified? For the discussion, ideally these employers make their money nationally/globally and might be at risk of big swings, vs. mostly serving local customers.

Seattle is certainly one, dominated by four employers with varying ups, downs, and risks. Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, and the military each employ somewhere in the 60,000 range locally. Some of these have been volatile, particularly Boeing. The multiplier effect from the 240,000 and other company spending might support 800k to 1m local jobs out of 2.25m total. What happens if HQ2s multiply, or Boeing ships more production to Charleston?

Detroit, DC, Norfolk, San Francisco, Orlando, Las Vegas....but really every city to some extent?