Elizabethton Employment Portfolio

A few weeks ago we talked about where people who live and work in Elizabethton come from and go to daily. Today, I want to take a look at what business sectors those who work in Elizabethton work in. While the data we have available cannot tell us how many people in each sector commute to Elizabethton, we can tell how many of the 9,356 jobs works in each sector. Much like an investment or retirement portfolio, a city must have a diverse employment portfolio in order to ensure that if one industry type decreases the city will not die or become stagnant.

The largest employment sector for Elizabethton is the educational services sector (21.5%). This would include anyone who works for a K-12 school system or a place of higher education, such as Milligan College, Northeast State at Elizabethton, and Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology at Elizabethton. Milligan College is the highest, non-public employer of jobs in this sector in Elizabethton.

Out second largest category is the retail trade sector (20.2%). The largest individual employer in this category is Walmart who employs around 400 people.

Health care and social assistance is the third largest category, employing 16 percent of the people who work in Elizabethton. Sycamore Shoals Hospital is by far the largest employer in this category employing approximately 400 people. Life Care Center of Elizabethton, however, is another top employer with around 160 employees.

Next, is the accommodation and food services category with 10.8 percent of the people who work in Elizabethton. While we do not have data on any particular employer, this category does include the likes of Applebee’s, Fatz, Beef O’Brady’s, Jiggy Ray’s, Dino’s, McDonalds, and Bojangles, etc.

Lastly, manufacturing is the fifth largest employment sector (8%). The largest employer in Elizabethton in this sector is Snap-On Tools Inc. employing over 330 employees.

Going into the future we see the greatest growth locally in the health care and social assistance sector, educational services sector, and retail sector. And as we can see, many of our top ten employers can be found in these categories. What other business sectors do we want to bring into Elizabethton in the future? What top business sectors do we already have that we want to see grow? Let’s talk about it!