Companies in Iowa: 14 public headquarters, the biggest employers and 83,321 businesses

This page is for anyone who needs to find or size Iowa companies: suppliers and partners, job seekers, researchers and B2B sellers working the state. It starts with the public companies headquartered in Iowa, then the largest employers, the Census count of businesses by county and sector, the state's registries, and a worked example for selling to Des Moines insurers.

The public companies headquartered in Iowa

Ranked by revenue in each company's latest annual report on Form 10-K, with the head office from the report's cover page:

A blank employee cell means we didn't take a headcount from that filing. For the three banks, revenue is net interest income plus noninterest income, not gross interest income. Headcounts are company-wide. Principal says about 11,600 of its 19,700 people work in the US. HNI's figure includes about 1,000 temporary workers. Heartland Express averaged about 4,560 drivers and other staff in 2025 and had about 3,630 by January 2026.

The Des Moines cluster is the story. Athene, Principal and F&G together reported $47.04 billion, and with United Fire in Cedar Rapids, insurers and annuity writers account for 4 of the 6 Iowa headquarters with more than $1 billion in revenue. Some large Iowa companies aren't public at all: Hy-Vee, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa, Pella and Vermeer appear on the region's employer list below but aren't listed companies, so they don't appear here.

Iowa's largest employers

The Greater Des Moines Partnership, the region's economic development organization, publishes a 2026 list of major employers with more than 300 employees, in size ranges. Its region reaches beyond the metro to towns such as Pella, Marshalltown and Oskaloosa:

The 1,000 to 4,999 tier has 29 employers in all, including construction and mechanical contractors (Baker Group, The Weitz Company, The Waldinger Corporation), health providers and Prairie Meadows casino. The Partnership marks which employers have their headquarters or only location in the region; most do. Iowa Workforce Development doesn't publish a ranked statewide list, but its employer database lets you search employers by location, industry and size.

How many businesses are in Iowa

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts locations with paid employees. For Iowa in 2023:

In bands: 71,012 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 10,327 have 20 to 99 and 1,982 have 100 or more.

Iowa has 99 counties, and the top eight hold 46.4% of its establishments. Dallas County, which takes in Waukee and part of West Des Moines, pays the most of the eight. Average pay is our calculation from CBP payroll. CBP counts locations, not companies, and excludes self-employed people, government and most farm work.

What Iowa businesses do

Manufacturing has only 4.1% of establishments but the most jobs of any sector, and 31 of Iowa's 91 workplaces with 1,000 or more employees: meat and food plants (14 of them in food manufacturing) and machinery makers, including agricultural equipment. For the plant-level picture, see manufacturing companies in Iowa. Finance and insurance is the other heavyweight. Insurance carriers (NAICS 5241) alone have 361 establishments and 32,747 employees, and Polk County has 17,460 of those jobs, a figure the Census Bureau flags as moderately affected by the noise it adds for confidentiality.

How to look up an Iowa business

Prospecting Iowa's insurers

Iowa's carriers are concentrated in a few office parks and buy technology, actuarial and data services through small, senior teams. Many of the 361 carrier establishments are claims or service sites of the same companies, so the first job is to separate head offices from branches.

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Raccoon River Data (raccoonriverdata.example) moves insurers' actuarial and policy data to modern cloud platforms and wants Iowa carriers.

• Insurance carrier establishments with 20 to 999 employees: 30 + 14 + 17 + 11 + 11 = 83.
• It assumes about half are second sites of the same carriers: roughly 40 companies to approach.
• Three engagements a year at $250,000 each would be $750,000.

It leads with the chief actuary and the head of data, brings in IT once there's a business case, and times outreach to product launches and new regulatory reporting requirements. Splitting head offices from branch sites and finding who owns the data platform at each is the research Bebop does for each account.

Subject: [Company]'s month-end valuation run

Hi [first name],

Most annuity writers we talk to in Des Moines still spend the first week of each month moving data between policy systems before the valuation can start.

We move actuarial and policy data onto a single cloud platform without changing your models, and we've done it for carriers your size. Could I show you how long the first month-end took after cutover at a similar company?

[Your name], Raccoon River Data

Next step: turn a market like this into a working list with how to build a prospect list.