Economy
Main article: Economy of Omaha, NebraskaAccording to USA Today, Omaha ranks eighth among the nation's 50 largest cities in both per-capita billionaires and Fortune 500 companies. Major employers in the area include Alegent Health System, Omaha Public Schools, First Data Corporation, Methodist Health System, Mutual of Omaha, ConAgra Foods, Nebraska Medical Center, Offutt Air Force Base, and the West Corporation. With diversification in several industries, including banking, insurance, telecommunications, architecture/construction, and transportation, Omaha's economy has grown dramatically since the early 1990s. In 2001 Newsweek identified Omaha as one of the Top 10 high-tech havens in the nation. Six national fiber optic networks converge in Omaha.
Omaha's most prominent businessman is Warren Buffett, nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha", who is regularly ranked one of the richest people in the world. Five Omaha-based companies: Berkshire Hathaway, ConAgra Foods, Union Pacific Railroad, Mutual of Omaha, and Kiewit Corporation, are among the Fortune 500.
Omaha is the headquarters of several other major corporations, including the Gallup Organization, TD Ameritrade, infoGROUP, Werner Enterprises, First National Bank and First Comp Insurance. Many large technology firms have major operations or operational headquarters in Omaha, including Bank of the West, First Data, PayPal and LinkedIn. The city is also home to three of the 30 largest architecture firms in the United States, including HDR, Inc., DLR Group, Inc., and Leo A Daly. Omaha has the fifth highest percentage of low-income African Americans in the country.
Tourist attractions in Omaha include history, sports, outdoors and cultural experiences. Its principal tourist attractions are the Henry Doorly Zoo and the College World Series. The Old Market in Downtown Omaha is another major attraction and is important to the city's retail economy. The city has been a tourist destination for many years. Famous early visitors included British author Rudyard Kipling and General George Crook. In 1883 Omaha hosted the first official performance of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for eight thousand attendees. In 1898 the city hosted more than 1,000,000 visitors from across the United States at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, a world's fair that lasted for more than half the year.
Research on leisure and hospitality situates Omaha in the same tier for tourists as the neighboring cities of Topeka, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Denver, Colorado. A recent study found that investment of $1 million in cultural tourism generated approximately $83,000 in state and local taxes, and provided support for hundreds of jobs for the metropolitan area, which in turn led to additional tax revenue for government.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)