Companies in Akron: Goodyear, FirstEnergy, the county's top employers and 16,360 businesses

This page is for people looking for companies in Akron: job seekers, suppliers, companies thinking of moving to Northeast Ohio and B2B sellers working the region. It starts with Summit County's own ranking of its largest employers, then the public companies headquartered in the metro, the industries that remain from Akron's rubber era, the Census count of every business, and the records for checking one. The Census figures cover the Akron metro: Summit and Portage counties.

Summit County's largest employers

The County of Summit publishes a principal employers table in its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, drawn from the Greater Akron Chamber and other public information. The 2025 report compares the top ten with 2016:

The ten employ 44,761 people, 16.24% of the county's 275,600 employed (an employment figure from the state's labor market information office). Three health systems hold three of the top four places, and Akron Children's has grown by two-thirds since 2016 while Summa has shrunk by 4,461. Signet, sixth in 2016 with 2,900, and Time Warner Cable, tenth, have dropped off the list.

Public companies headquartered in Akron

Five SEC-registered companies with more than $500 million of revenue give a principal executive office in the metro in their latest 10-K:

Revenue is as reported; FirstEnergy's headcount is the county figure above. Together the five reported $36.17 billion. Goodyear's 2025 sales of $18.28 billion were down from $20.07 billion in 2023, and its 10-K says it completed the sales of its off-the-road tire business, the Dunlop brand and its polymer chemicals business during 2025, bringing in about $2.2 billion.

Three nearby names aren't counted here. Signet Jewelers, the Kay and Zales parent, lists a 546,000-square-foot corporate and distribution facility in Akron in its 10-K but gives Hamilton, Bermuda as its principal executive office; it reported $6.81 billion of sales for the year to January 2026. Timken ($4.58 billion) and Diebold Nixdorf ($3.81 billion) are headquartered in North Canton, in Stark County, which is in the Canton metro rather than Akron's.

The Rubber Capital, after the tire plants

Average pay is our calculation from County Business Patterns (CBP) payroll; the hospital and chemicals payroll figures carry the Census Bureau's moderate-noise flag. Health care is now the metro's biggest employer by sector, and its seven general hospitals average about 2,300 employees each. Rubber products are a small industry today, 45 establishments with 2,098 jobs, but plastics products (72 establishments, 6,167 jobs) and chemicals keep the polymer base alive. The 207 management-of-companies establishments, the headquarters and regional offices of companies such as Goodyear and FirstEnergy, pay $97,267 on average.

How many businesses are in Akron

In bands: 13,431 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 2,440 with 20 to 99 and 489 with 100 or more. Summit County has 13,309 establishments and 249,827 employees; Portage County, home to Kent, has 3,051 and 48,660. These are County Business Patterns (CBP) counts of workplaces with paid staff; one company with several sites is counted once per site, and the self-employed aren't included. For the state as a whole, see companies in Ohio.

Checking an Akron company

The Ohio Secretary of State's search refused our automated check, so it isn't linked; search for it by name. For contractors and other licensed trades, verify the license through Ohio eLicense as well as the entity's status.

Prospecting Akron companies

Akron's buyers sort into three groups: the health systems at the top of the county list, which buy through supply chain and value analysis committees; the two big headquarters and Signet's corporate center, which buy for operations far beyond Akron; and several hundred midsize manufacturers, distributors and service firms where one or two people decide.

Illustrative example. The company, prices and results are fictional; the counts are from the Census data above.

Cuyahoga Process Data (cuyahogadata.example) sells scrap-tracking software for plastics and rubber molders.

• Plastics and rubber products establishments in the metro: 117.
• Those with 20 to 249 employees, big enough to run several presses but too small for an in-house analytics team: 24 + 25 + 14 = 63.
• At $18,000 a plant a year and a 15% win rate, that's about 9 plants and $162,000 of annual revenue.
• It targets the plant manager and the quality manager, and times outreach to the weeks after a resin price increase, when scrap costs most.

Knowing which of the 63 plants mold their own parts rather than distribute them, and who runs quality at each, takes research on every account; Bebop does it and explains why each fits.

Subject: Scrap rates on [Company]'s presses

Hi [first name],

When resin prices go up, every percent of scrap on the floor costs more, and most plants your size only see the number at month end.

We track scrap by press and by shift in real time, from the counters you already have, and we work with molders in Summit and Portage counties. Could I show you what a plant with 15 presses found in its first month?

[Your name], Cuyahoga Process Data

Next step: go deeper on the state's factory base in manufacturing companies in Ohio.