Cuencaruns 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
Ceramics & building materials
Graiman, Cerámica Andina, Italpisos, Hormicreto
Cuenca is Ecuador's tile and sanitaryware capital and Graiman is the country's dominant producer. The clays of the Azuay basin and a long craft tradition turned into a genuinely export-scale industry — one of the few in Ecuador that is neither extractive nor agricultural.
Tyres & industrial manufacturing
Continental Tire Andina, Indurama, Fibro Acero, Vanderbilt
The Continental tyre plant — the former Ecuadorian Rubber Company — has made tyres here for decades with several hundred people on the production line, though it has been running well below capacity and cut to a five-day week in 2025. Indurama makes cookers and refrigerators for the Andean market from Cuenca. The Parque Industrial in the east is where most of this sits, and where the tram line begins.
Toquilla straw hats & artisan craft
Homero Ortega, K. Dorfzaun, and the workshops of Sígsig, Chordeleg and Gualaceo
The hat the world calls Panamanian is woven in Azuay and Manabí and finished in Cuenca, and the weaving is inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. Chordeleg's silver and Gualaceo's textiles sit in the same craft economy an hour outside the city.
Healthcare & the retiree economy
Hospital del Río, Monte Sinaí, Santa Inés, plus English-speaking clinics, insurers, lawyers and relocation agents
Several thousand foreign retirees have produced a real service sector: private hospitals that market to them, bilingual professionals, and an entire relocation-services trade. It is one of the few places in Ecuador where being an English speaker is commercially useful.
Higher education & research
Universidad de Cuenca, Universidad del Azuay, Universidad Politécnica Salesiana
The Universidad de Cuenca dates from 1867 and, with the other two, makes the city a genuine student town — which is why the bars, bookshops and cheap lunch places outnumber what a city this size would otherwise carry.
Tourism & heritage
Fundación Municipal Turismo para Cuenca, hotels in the historic centre, tour operators for Cajas and the Inca ruins
The historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999, and the Cajas national park half an hour west and the Ingapirca ruins to the north anchor a steady, mid-scale tourism economy rather than a mass-market one.
Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.