From Recovery to Resilience:
How Emporia Is Rethinking
Economic Development

In both its name and history, Emporia, Kansas, has commerce at its core. Founded as a business venture in 1857, the city took its name from the Greek emporion, meaning "market". As Emporia grew, its economic role expanded beyond its boundaries. The arrival of two railroads in 1869 and 1870 connected Emporia to broader markets, and the city became a regional trading center serving the surrounding agricultural economy.

That role continued to evolve as the American economy changed. For much of the 20th century, manufacturing became a defining engine of economic growth across America. It allowed rural communities like Emporia to connect local workers to markets beyond the region, bringing outside dollars in through wages, supplier purchases, and investment.

Emporia increasingly built its economy around manufacturing, developing the infrastructure, workforce, and institutional expertise needed to support major employers. By the mid-1990s, manufacturing had become a significant strength of the local economy. During this period, Lyon County, where Emporia is located, saw more than 2,800 jobs added to its economy, and manufacturing jobs accounted for nearly 40% of that growth.

Then the conditions that had supported this model began to change. Because of the historical dominance of its industrial sector, Emporia was acutely affected by several large manufacturing closures over the past two decades, one of which coincided with the Great Recession.

As the national economy recovered, Emporia rebuilt a portion of its manufacturing employment. Existing firms expanded, new investments followed, and the community continued relying on the industrial assets and economic development capacity established previously. While some manufacturing employment returned, trends suggested that manufacturing activity had become concentrated among fewer, larger operations.

This distinction matters. Restoring manufacturing jobs replenished a major source of employment and external revenue, but concentration among fewer firms increased risks associated with the loss of a single employer.

This left Emporia with a more complicated economic development challenge than simply rebuilding the employment lost during the downturn. The community had clear strengths and historic reasons to continue investing in manufacturing. And while new employers and expansions brought jobs and investment back into the community, they did not eliminate the risk the Tyson closure had exposed. With so much employment still concentrated among a handful of large employers and industries, another major loss could have an outsized impact.

Although many rural communities confronted the same pressures during the Great Recession, Emporia remained more concentrated in manufacturing than most of its peers afterward. By the end of the 2010s, Emporia had demonstrated that its economy could recover somewhat by drawing on its previously developed economic strategies. What was also clear, though, was that future growth would require expanding the range of firms, occupations, and industries to create a broader economic base that could reduce the risk of additional economic "busts."

The question, then, was whether Emporia could build additional economic lanes alongside its manufacturing strength. In doing so, the community could preserve its industrial advantages while capturing new opportunities emerging from an increasingly knowledge- and innovation-driven economy. Interviews with a select group of Emporians suggested that many have abandoned the idea that another large employer will come to Emporia and save its economy, while noting the need for diversification.

In the second half of the 2010s, Emporia began focusing on broadening its economy, building on existing community assets and institutional capacity. Investments in entrepreneurship, higher education, workforce development, downtown revitalization, and digital connectivity had developed alongside Emporia's industrial economy, each responding to different community needs and opportunities. Taken together, these investments expanded the types of businesses, workers, and economic activity the community was increasingly positioned to support.

Emporia Main Street had developed significant capacity around small-business formation and downtown development. Emporia State University and Flint Hills Technical College provided higher education and technical training that added depth to the community's workforce and institutional base relative to its size. Local schools and workforce organizations invested in STEM education and career preparation, while strong broadband and fiber infrastructure expanded the ability of workers and firms to reach employers, customers, and markets beyond the region.

In 2019, Emporia and CORI began building a strategy through an Economic Development Administration i6/Build to Scale grant proposal. The effort envisioned an innovation hub, expanded fabrication capacity, proof-of-concept funding, mentorship, and stronger connections among entrepreneurs, manufacturers, higher education, and community organizations. Although the proposal did not receive federal funding, the planning process helped coordinate and clarify both the assets Emporia could build upon and the gaps that would need to be addressed. Subsequent assessment work identified strong broadband access, educational institutions, entrepreneurship programming, coworking and maker capacity, and civic collaboration as existing strengths, while highlighting continued needs in scalable-startup support, technology programming, inclusion, and awareness of technology careers.

Emporia's response took shape through a series of smaller investments that began to put this strategy into practice. Makerspace and fabrication capacity expanded the physical infrastructure available to entrepreneurs, while technology-focused programming created new opportunities for residents to develop and test scalable business ideas. Digital-skilling and workforce initiatives addressed the labor side of the strategy, and stronger connections among economic development organizations, higher education, and other community partners increased the capacity to support entrepreneurs as they moved from an initial idea toward business formation. The E-Tech Startups bootcamp became one of the clearest examples of this approach, providing a structured pathway for entrepreneurs seeking to develop ventures capable of reaching customers beyond the local market. Emporia reports that two technology businesses have subsequently launched out of the program. Some interviewees expressed hope around technology as a path forward.

These early outcomes remain modest relative to the scale of Emporia's economy, but their importance extends beyond the number of businesses created to date. Building a more diversified economy requires the community to develop a repeatable process through which entrepreneurs can identify opportunities, acquire the skills and support needed to pursue them, form businesses, and eventually reach markets beyond Emporia. The infrastructure and programming developed during this period began to establish that process. Unlike the recruitment of a major industrial employer, where a single investment can introduce hundreds of jobs at once, locally driven technology-based development builds gradually as entrepreneurs, businesses, and skilled workers accumulate over time.

One way to measure an economy's diversification is to look at the sectors its jobs fall into: tradable goods, such as natural resource extraction, large-scale agriculture, and manufacturing; tradable services, such as banking, finance, consulting, tourism, and technology; and local services. The average rural share of tradable-goods employment is much higher than the nonrural share, leaving rural economies concentrated in fewer types of jobs. Increasing the share of tradable-service jobs can help offset this concentration. Diversification cannot prevent closures or industry downturns, but it can reduce how much of the community's economy is at risk when they occur.

At first glance, it can be hard to see evidence of progress. But average wages for these sectors tell a different story.

When businesses sell goods or services outside the region, they bring outside dollars into the community. Those dollars can then circulate through wages, local spending, suppliers, and investment, creating economic activity beyond the jobs and income generated directly by those businesses. Economists refer to these subsequent rounds of economic activity as the multiplier effect.

Tradable services create another way to bring outside income into a community. A local software company can serve customers across the country, a professional-services firm can work with clients elsewhere, and a resident can work remotely for an employer outside the region while spending those wages locally. Research has shown that growth in tradable-sector employment, particularly in skilled and high-technology industries, can have an outsized effect on local employment by raising demand for locally produced goods and services.⁴ The opportunity is not for rural communities to replace manufacturing, but to broaden the number and types of businesses participating in external markets—making the economy more diverse and, over time, more resilient.

Emporia's diversification efforts to date support this shift. Individually, these activities may appear small when compared with the employment and revenue associated with a major manufacturing win; the true economic shift becomes clear only as they accumulate over time. Emporia interviewees recognized this, and some rejected the conventional economic development goal of "transformative" initiatives with big impact. One interviewee noted the importance of recognizing small wins.

Manufacturing remains one of the community's greatest economic strengths, built through decades of investment in infrastructure, workforce, relationships, and expertise. But the Great Recession and the Tyson closure demonstrated the risk of having too much of a community's employment and income dependent on a relatively small number of industries and employers that are not locally owned.

The opportunity now is to build alongside that strength. Entrepreneurship, technology, professional services, remote work, and other tradable activities can create additional ways for Emporia's workers and businesses to reach markets beyond the region. Some of those opportunities can grow directly from the manufacturing base itself, while others can create entirely new sources of jobs and outside income. Early signs suggest that diversification is beginning, but like all economic development, building these new sources of growth will take sustained effort over time.

The next phase will depend on how these community-wide strengths and assets evolve and work together. Emporia's next chapter won't be built around one big bet. It will be built through many smaller opportunities — new businesses, new skills, new connections, and new ways to bring income into the community. Main Street, Emporia State University, Flint Hills Technical College, economic development organizations, employers, and other local and regional partners each have a role to play in continuing the community's diversification and modernization. While Main Street has been a significant driver of this work, building a more diverse and resilient economy will require collective commitment and action across the community. Long-term progress will depend on partners across the ecosystem taking ownership of the roles they are best positioned to play. Emporia's strategy isn't to replace what works. It's to build a stronger, more resilient economy alongside it.