How Important are Fortune 500 Companies?

[KCTigerFan]

The new 2007 List is out and as usual KC is hardly represented. 

St. Louis has eight Fortune 500 Companies, Omaha has five... KC?  Two...

YRC @ 249
H&R Block @ 459

I would also count Sprint, though officially they are not based here anymore.

We do have several that fall in the top 1000 (IBC, Great Plains, DST, Seaboard)


So, I ask the Board this.  How important is it to a city to have Fortune 500 companies based in their city???

[NDgravy]

It is very important that a city has either Fortune 500 companies based in either the city or suburbs.  The reason they matter is that corporations pay for museum, theater and sporting events, among many other benefits to a city.  The larger a company, the more they are able to help support civic projects.  Also, along with these larger corporations, cities have an increase of highly paid executives, lawyers, consultants, and bankers.  These people further support civic programs.

These same effects can be felt by cities that have several large offices from large companies.  Chicago, though American Airlines isn't based there, receives multiple benefits from American's hub at O'Hare as the airline pays big money to support the arts.  Furthermore, Southwest which basically has a hub at Midway supports several sporting events and the arts.  Kansas City gets this same effect from Midwest Airlines and it's support of the Royals.

So in short, the reason for having Fortune 500 companies is the added wealth to a region.

[Maitre D]

It is like anything else - if it's good, yeah, it's imoprtant to have. 


I look more at regional income than I do, corporate HQ.  KC's average household income is 56K.....compared to Indy at 51K, Pittsburgh at 45K, New Orleans at 34K.  That's what I care about. 


KC metro does fine economically.

[NDgravy]

It is like anything else - if it's good, yeah, it's imoprtant to have. 


I look more at regional income than I do, corporate HQ.  KC's average household income is 56K.....compared to Indy at 51K, Pittsburgh at 45K, New Orleans at 34K.   That's what I care about. 


KC metro does fine economically.

I am not saying KC does not do fine economically... I have seen the houses in the Country Club District and Mission Hills.  I just think that large corporations add wealth to civic life besides just people's incomes.

Also, where did you get those household income averages?  I did a search on wikipedia and KC wasn't at that level.  They were around 46,000 for a family.

[Maitre D]

KC star data.

and it's KC metro, so maybe you're not pulling in JoCo.  I'm not sure.

[NDgravy]

This is the information I was talking about:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolit ... _by_income.

The info puts KC 36 out of 280 metro areas for median household income, and they would be higher in metros over 1 million.  The KC metro area household income is $46,193, which compares favorably to Omaha $44,981, St. Louis $44,437, Indy $45,548, Pittsburgh $37,467, and New Orleans $35,317.  So even in this ranking, KC does pretty well against both nearby cities, and some of the it's peers.  I can't find the data on the KC Star website, but I am sure that they are probably just using different figures.

[Cratedigger]

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity ... -500.html

1 F500 (Seaboard) and only 4 F1000

I guess you can add Garmin but not a great look for KC

[GRID]

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity ... -500.html

1 F500 (Seaboard) and only 4 F1000

I guess you can add Garmin but not a great look for KC

KC is right there with Springfield MO though!



And only 4 in F1000 is pretty bad. Could be worse. I thought AMC was bought out by a company in China or something.

[beautyfromashes]

If some of these big tech companies are really leaving California like I've been reading, it sure seems we'd be a good place to land. I'm sure the city would fall all over themselves with incentives and handouts. There'd be no competition for top influence from other top companies. Better to be a big fish in a small pond.

[Anthony_Hugo98]

I thought AMC was bought out by a company in China or something.

Wanda group had a majority ownership stake that was purchased either during COVID or right before. They sold out during the meme stock craze. Ownership responsibility is back to Leawood

[langosta]

If some of these big tech companies are really leaving California like I've been reading, it sure seems we'd be a good place to land. I'm sure the city would fall all over themselves with incentives and handouts. There'd be no competition for top influence from other top companies. Better to be a big fish in a small pond.

There is no generator of acceptable talent in our region. The closest is WashU in St Louis.

[Cratedigger]

If some of these big tech companies are really leaving California like I've been reading, it sure seems we'd be a good place to land. I'm sure the city would fall all over themselves with incentives and handouts. There'd be no competition for top influence from other top companies. Better to be a big fish in a small pond.

There is no generator of acceptable talent in our region. The closest is WashU in St Louis.

+1

Any company that is in KC has to look outside the region for talent and convince them to move here. Hate to say it but that’s not an easy sell.

Cerner tried heavily recruiting from my major at my Texas college. Won over the career center team which pushed it hard. Also visited our classes regularly to talk to us.

Everyone heard KC and instantly tuned it out - if not then making fun of it after class.

For the record, the same thing happened to JB Hunt and Walmart when they came. If you see insane investments in making Northwest Arkansas “cool” by the Hunt and Walton families, that sell to future talent is a big reason why

[beautyfromashes]

If some of these big tech companies are really leaving California like I've been reading, it sure seems we'd be a good place to land. I'm sure the city would fall all over themselves with incentives and handouts. There'd be no competition for top influence from other top companies. Better to be a big fish in a small pond.

There is no generator of acceptable talent in our region. The closest is WashU in St Louis.

This is not entirely true, but I understand your point.

Missouri S&T is a very good engineering school and we are surrounded by many universities (KU, KSU, MU, ISU, Nebraska, etc) that should have half away decent tech students. Garmin seems to be able to find tech talent here and I’m sure there are old Sprint people still working in places. But, the main difference is, in a place like SF or Seattle, a tech company would have to compete with 100 other tech companies for talent. Here, they wouldn’t have that. People would jump from one to the other for higher pay in the same city. And, if people are wanting to leave SF like corporations are (they are), then this is an opportunity to pull them with relocation.

[Highlander]

If some of these big tech companies are really leaving California like I've been reading, it sure seems we'd be a good place to land. I'm sure the city would fall all over themselves with incentives and handouts. There'd be no competition for top influence from other top companies. Better to be a big fish in a small pond.

There is no generator of acceptable talent in our region. The closest is WashU in St Louis.

This is not entirely true, but I understand your point.

Missouri S&T is a very good engineering school and we are surrounded by many universities (KU, KSU, MU, ISU, Nebraska, etc) that should have half away decent tech students. Garmin seems to be able to find tech talent here and I’m sure there are old Sprint people still working in places. But, the main difference is, in a place like SF or Seattle, a tech company would have to compete with 100 other tech companies for talent. Here, they wouldn’t have that. People would jump from one to the other for higher pay in the same city. And, if people are wanting to leave SF like corporations are (they are), then this is an opportunity to pull them with relocation.

KU and MU are plenty good. I worked for a fortune 500 company with its major operations in Texas that hired STEM employees extensively from U of Kansas and to a lesser extent MU and Missouri Rolla. For Supply Chain people they actually hired some people from CMSU - it apparently has a great department in that regard. It's all about the particular program and how it fits in a certain industry, not so much the greater reputation of the school. I didn't really note any difference between the achievements of people I worked with from different universities (we had people from MIT and Stanford as well as West Virginia and Kansas - and a host of others) other than ego.

[langosta]

If some of these big tech companies are really leaving California like I've been reading, it sure seems we'd be a good place to land. I'm sure the city would fall all over themselves with incentives and handouts. There'd be no competition for top influence from other top companies. Better to be a big fish in a small pond.

There is no generator of acceptable talent in our region. The closest is WashU in St Louis.

This is not entirely true, but I understand your point.

Missouri S&T is a very good engineering school and we are surrounded by many universities (KU, KSU, MU, ISU, Nebraska, etc) that should have half away decent tech students. Garmin seems to be able to find tech talent here and I’m sure there are old Sprint people still working in places. But, the main difference is, in a place like SF or Seattle, a tech company would have to compete with 100 other tech companies for talent. Here, they wouldn’t have that. People would jump from one to the other for higher pay in the same city. And, if people are wanting to leave SF like corporations are (they are), then this is an opportunity to pull them with relocation.

Even Cerner said all of those local schools talent was very far behind other schools

[TheUrbanRoo]

Th volume of students flowing into KC versus StL is a lot more with KU, K-State, UMKC, Mizzou, and all the ancillary schools on the west side of the state + Wichita. StL has WashU yes, but far fewer major state schools around.

And to answer the question of the thread “How important are Fortune 500’s” I’d say maybe not as much as you’d think. Because almost all the metros with “more” on that map are depopulating or stagnant. It’s something I’ve pondered for years now since the StL people have always brought it up but yet the town still craters in population. My take is it’s a *piece* to the puzzle of building a metro obv but its importance is prob overstated.