Farmington has a remarkably balanced economy.  Our jobs are divided fairly equally into four main sectors: industrial, medical, governmental and local retail/service businesses.  Down through the years, the health of each sector has been to key to our continual forward motion and growth.  Naturally, our long-range strategy is to create new jobs in each sector, so I thought I would give you an update of where we stand in our efforts in each sector - I'll start with the industrial sector for this issue of the newsletter.

During 2009, we had job reductions in Play Power/Little Tikes and CAM Tech, but we also had increases in hiring in Accent, Data Dash and SRG-Global.  The increases more than made up for the losses, so we finished the year with a net increase of several hundred jobs.  We have two new businesses that started in 2009; Apollo Tractors and USA Drug.  Both of these new entities to our industrial parks are growing and currently employ about 30 people total.

The head of our Economic Development Department, Walt Williams, has been systematically meeting with all of our industries to help us understand their challenges, and find ways that the City can help them succeed.  Farmington, MO is committed to its industrial partners; they are on our mind every day as we seek to support them, advocate for them, and ultimately grow with them.