The largest employers in Kansas City: what the region's own lists show

This page is for job seekers, economic developers, journalists and B2B sellers who want to know who employs the most people around Kansas City. It uses the lists the region publishes itself, explains how each one counts, and adds federal job data so you can see how big the public sector is.

The region's list: OneKC major employers

OneKC, the site of the Kansas City Area Development Council (the regional economic development organization), publishes a list of 829 employers with their industry and a band for total regional employees. It doesn't publish exact counts or ranks, and its region is wider than the metro: it includes employers in Topeka, Lawrence, St. Joseph and Columbia. Some employers appear once per site; Amazon has 13 rows, each marked 5,000 to 9,999, so the band describes an employer's regional total, not each site.

The list was last modified on 6 July 2026, according to the page's metadata. Below 2,500, the 1,000 to 2,499 band holds 54 employers, from Black & Veatch, H&R Block, Lockton and UMB to General Motors, Cardinal Health and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

County lists with exact counts

Two county sources publish headcounts, which is the closest thing to a ranked list Kansas City has.

Wyandotte County. The Wyandotte Economic Development Council's Top 25 Employers (February 2024):

Overland Park, Johnson County. The Overland Park Chamber of Commerce publishes 15 major private employers for 2025, using the County Economic Research Institute's Johnson County Major Employers 2025, with local full-time employees. The first 12:

The chamber notes the counts are general estimates; some were self-reported by employers in November 2025. Its public employers are led by the Blue Valley School District (3,363). We found no comparable current list with counts for Jackson County.

Company filings can confirm a band. Olin's 10-K, for example, lists a labor agreement covering 1,358 employees at the Lake City ammunition plant in Independence, which OneKC places in the 1,000 to 2,499 band.

How big government is in Kansas City

The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages counts every job covered by unemployment insurance. Summing the metro's 14 counties for 2025:

Government employs 149,120 people, 13.7% of covered jobs. These are civilian jobs: active-duty soldiers at Fort Leavenworth and airmen at Whiteman aren't in the QCEW, which is one reason OneKC's bands for those posts look larger than the federal job count suggests. Average pay is the BLS figure for the metro total and our calculation (wages divided by jobs) for each employer type.

How rare a big employer is

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counts private business locations. Of the metro's 55,104 establishments in 2023, 112 had 500 to 999 employees and 57 had 1,000 or more. Where the sector is published, those 57 large sites break down as health care (16), professional and technical services (9), transportation and warehousing (6), finance and insurance (5), manufacturing (4), information (4) and administrative services (3). CBP counts locations with paid employees, so a hospital system with three big campuses counts three times, and it leaves out government. For the companies ranked by revenue instead, see the largest companies in Kansas City.

How Kansas City's largest employers buy

1. Health systems (KU Health System, Saint Luke's, HCA Midwest, Children's Mercy, AdventHealth, University Health) buy clinical products through group purchasing and value analysis committees, and staffing, facilities and IT through supply chain and HR. Our guide to selling to hospitals covers the process.
2. Public employers (federal agencies, two states, counties, cities and school districts) buy through posted bids and vendor registration, and the rules differ on each side of the state line. See selling to government.
3. Distribution and manufacturing sites (Amazon, Ford, GM, UPS, FedEx, BNSF) are run from headquarters in other states. Site leaders control day-to-day spending on safety, maintenance, staffing and services, but contracts above a threshold go through corporate procurement.
4. Local headquarters (Garmin, Hallmark, Burns & McDonnell, Black & Veatch, H&R Block) decide centrally in Kansas City, which makes them the region's best targets for anything bought at the corporate level.

Illustrative example. The company, prices and results are fictional; the employers and bands are from OneKC's list.

Heartland WorkWell (heartlandworkwell.example), an occupational health clinic group in Lenexa, sells pre-placement exams and drug screening to large employers.

• OneKC lists 22 manufacturing and distribution employers with 1,000 or more regional employees.
• It assumes 15 have sites within a 45-minute drive of its clinics, averaging 2,000 workers each: about 30,000 workers.
• At 25% annual turnover, those sites hire about 7,500 people a year.
• At $85 per exam and screen, winning three employers with 1,500 hires between them is worth about $127,500 a year.

It contacts each site's HR or safety manager, because hiring volume and time-to-start are decided at the site. Finding those site-level managers across 22 employers is the slow part; Bebop can search for them and draft outreach for each site.

Subject: Same-day pre-placement exams for [site name]

Hi [first name],

When [site name] is hiring for peak, a two-day wait for a drug screen or physical is often what loses a new hire to the warehouse down the road.

Our Lenexa and Riverside clinics turn exams around the same day, with results in a portal your team can check. Would it help to see our average turnaround for other Kansas City distribution sites?

[Your name], Heartland WorkWell

Next step: see how large organizations split their buying in enterprise account research.