Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Economy | Top employers | Tourist Industry

🇺🇸 Omaha is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River.

Omaha is the anchor of the eight-county, bi-state Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. The Omaha Metropolitan Area is the 58th-largest in the United States.

Omaha's pioneer period began in 1854, when the city was founded by speculators from neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa. The city was founded along the Missouri River, and a crossing called Lone Tree Ferry earned the city its nickname, the "Gateway to the West". Omaha introduced this new West to the world in 1898, when it played host to the World's Fair, dubbed the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. During the 19th century, Omaha's central location in the United States spurred the city to become an important national transportation hub. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, the transportation and jobbing sectors were important in the city, along with its railroads and breweries. In the 20th century, the Omaha Stockyards, once the world's largest, and its meatpacking plants gained international prominence.

Today, Omaha is the home to the headquarters of four Fortune 500 companies: mega-conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway; one of the world's largest construction companies, Kiewit Corporation; insurance and financial firm Mutual of Omaha; and the United States' largest railroad operator, Union Pacific Corporation. Berkshire Hathaway is headed by local investor Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, according to a decade's worth of Forbes rankings, some of which have ranked him as high as No. 1.

Omaha is also the home to five Fortune 1000 headquarters: Green Plains, Intrado, TD Ameritrade, Valmont Industries, and Werner Enterprises. Also headquartered in Omaha are the following: First National Bank of Omaha, the largest privately held bank in the United States; three of the nation's ten largest architecture/engineering firms (DLR Group, HDR, Inc., and Leo A Daly); and the Gallup Organization, of Gallup Poll fame, and its riverfront Gallup University.

Notable modern Omaha inventions include the following: the "pink hair curler" created at Omaha's Tip-Top Products; Butter Brickle Ice Cream, and the Reuben sandwich, conceived by a chef at the then–Blackstone Hotel on 36th and Farnam Streets; cake mix, developed by Duncan Hines, then a division of Omaha's Nebraska Consolidated Mills, the forerunner to today's ConAgra Foods; center-pivot irrigation by the Omaha company now known as Valmont Corporation; Raisin Bran, developed by Omaha's Skinner Macaroni Co.; the first ski lift in the U.S., in 1936, by Omaha's Union Pacific Corp.; the Top 40 radio format, pioneered by Todd Storz, scion of Omaha's Storz Brewing Co. and head of Storz Broadcasting, and first used in the U.S. at Omaha's KOWH Radio; and the TV dinner, developed by Omaha's Carl A. Swanson.

Economy According to USA Today, Omaha ranks eighth among the nation's 50 largest cities in both per-capita billionaires and Fortune 500 companies. With diversification in several industries, including banking, insurance, telecommunications, architecture/construction, and transportation, Omaha's economy has grown dramatically since the early 1990s. In 2001 Newsweek identified Omaha as one of the top 10 high-tech havens in the nation. Six national fiber optic networks converge in Omaha.

Omaha's most prominent businessman is Warren Buffett, nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha", who is regularly ranked one of the richest people in the world. Four Omaha-based companies: Berkshire Hathaway, Union Pacific Railroad, Mutual of Omaha, and Kiewit Corporation, are among the Fortune 500.

Omaha is the headquarters of several other major corporations, including the Gallup Organization, TD Ameritrade, Werner Enterprises, First National Bank, Gavilon, Scoular and First Comp Insurance. Many other large national firms have major operations or operational headquarters in Omaha, including Bank of the West, First Data, Sojern, PayPal, LinkedIn, Pacific Life, MetLife and Conagra Brands. The city is also home to three of the 30 largest architecture firms in the United States, including HDR, Inc., DLR Group, Inc., and Leo A Daly. In 2013, Forbes' named Omaha among its list of the Best Places for Business and Careers.

Top employers According to the Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership, the largest regional employers are: 1 Offutt Air Force Base; 2 CHI Health; 3 Omaha Public Schools; 4 Methodist Health System; 5 Nebraska Medical Center; 6 University of Nebraska Medical Center; 7 First Data; 8 Union Pacific; 9 Hy-Vee; 10 First National of Nebraska.

Tourist Industry Tourist attractions in Omaha include history, sports, outdoors and cultural experiences. Its principal tourist attractions are the Henry Doorly Zoo and the College World Series. The Old Market in Downtown Omaha is another major attraction and is important to the city's retail economy. The city has been a tourist destination for many years. Famous early visitors included British author Rudyard Kipling and General George Crook. In 1883 Omaha hosted the first official performance of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for 8,000 attendees. In 1898 the city hosted more than 1 million visitors from across the United States at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, a world's fair that lasted for more than half the year. Research on leisure and hospitality situates Omaha in the same tier for tourists as the neighboring cities of Des Moines, Iowa; Topeka, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Denver, Colorado; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A recent study found investment of $1 million in cultural tourism generated approximately $83,000 in state and local taxes, and provided support for hundreds of jobs for the metropolitan area, which in turn led to additional tax revenue for government.

Omaha, Nebraska, United States