Cincinnatiruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Consumer goods & retail
Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Cintas, E.W. Scripps, Castellini, LSI Industries
Procter & Gamble has been headquartered downtown since 1837 and Kroger is one of the largest grocery retailers in the world; between them they anchor a genuine consumer-goods cluster with a deep marketing, brand-management, packaging design and consumer-research layer that exists in very few US cities. If you work in brand or in market research, this is a top-tier market.
Financial services & insurance
Fifth Third Bancorp, Western & Southern Financial Group, American Financial Group, Great American Insurance, Johnson Investment Counsel
Fifth Third is one of the larger US regional banks and Western & Southern and American Financial are both substantial insurers headquartered here. It is a stable, unglamorous finance economy — banking operations, underwriting and asset management rather than trading.
Health care & paediatric research
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, UC Health, TriHealth, Bon Secours Mercy Health, St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Northern Kentucky
Cincinnati Children's is among the largest and most heavily research-funded paediatric hospitals in the world and is a genuine reason families relocate here. The University of Cincinnati's medical campus sits alongside it in Corryville, making health care and biomedical research the largest employment sector not tied to a consumer cycle.
Aerospace, manufacturing & logistics
GE Aerospace at Evendale, Amazon Air's hub at CVG, DHL's Americas hub at CVG, Total Quality Logistics, Milacron, AK Steel legacy operations
GE Aerospace's Evendale plant has built jet engines since the 1940s and remains one of the region's largest industrial employers. Across the river, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport hosts both DHL's Americas hub and Amazon Air's main hub, which between them have made air freight one of the fastest-growing parts of the metro economy — all of it physically in Kentucky.
Higher education & public sector
the University of Cincinnati, Xavier University, Northern Kentucky University, Cincinnati State, the City of Cincinnati, Hamilton County
The University of Cincinnati is a large public research university and invented the co-operative education model in 1906, which still shapes local hiring — a great many employers here expect and are set up for student placements. Between UC, Xavier, NKU and local government there is a substantial stable employment base.
Software, marketing technology & start-ups
Kroger's digital arm, 84.51°, Paycor, Astronomer, the Over-the-Rhine start-up cluster around 1819 and Cintrifuse
The tech scene here grew out of the consumer-goods economy rather than around a university spin-out culture, so it skews heavily toward marketing analytics, retail data and enterprise software. 84.51° is Kroger's customer-data business and one of the larger data-science employers in the Midwest.
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