Business & Industry
Northwest Arkansas is an economic melting pot, making itself home to a wide range of businesses and industries, large and small. Major factors in the prosperity of the region’s economic vitality include the presence of major Fortune 500 companies, growing development and redevelopment projects, a labor force of more than 210,000 skilled workers (a statistic that continues to grow at about eight percent each year), a low unemployment rate, access to a substantial transportation network and the availability of exceptional resources.
The communities of northwest Arkansas have consistently been recognized for their outstanding economic environment. Most recent accolades in the city of Fayetteville include Inc. Magazine’s placement of it in its “2007 Best Cities for Doing Business” and Forbes’ ranking of the city as one of the “Best Places for Business and Careers 2007.”
Growing sectors in the area include services, retail trade, construction, communications and transportation. Additionally, technology-based companies are becoming increasingly prominent in northwest Arkansas—right along with the rest of the country. City governments, the University of Arkansas, the Interstate 540 Corridor, the GENESIS Technology Incubator and the Arkansas Research and Technology Park together have produced an encouraging setting for technology-based companies hoping to relocate to the area.
Leading Fortune 500 companies in the area include Wal-Mart, the world’s largest corporation, with headquarters in Bentonville; Tyson Foods, the world’s chief producer of poultry and beef products, as well as the world’s second largest pork producer, with a presence in Springdale; and J.B. Hunt, the country’s leading publicly-owned truckload carrier, located in Lowell.
Additional Fortune 500 companies with offices in the northwest Arkansas region include: Heinz, Pfizer, Philip Morris, Colgate, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, General Mills, Hormel, Kimberly-Clark, Proctor and Gamble, Clorox, Sara Lee, Mattel, Newell Rubbermaid, Hershey’s, Gillette and Disney.
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