The Chemical Processing Industry’s Top 10 Employers in the United States Represent Nearly 20% of the Total Industry Jobs

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Info Resources; Houston, Texas). The Chemical Processing Industry (CPI) is among the largest employers in the United States, ranking fourth among the twelve industries researched and monitored by Industrialinfo.com with an estimated 494,000 manufacturing jobs. The top ten employers of the CPI represent 19% or nearly 91,500 of the industry’s jobs from just 155 operational plants. Topping the list as the largest CPI employer based on data from Industrialinfo.com’s North America Plant Database is Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) (Midland, Michigan) providing over 21,400 jobs followed by DuPont (NYSE:DD) (Wilmington, Delaware) with just over 16,700.

Click on the image at right to view a list of the Top 10 CPI Companies

CPI employment is expected to remain relatively stable in the coming year loosing only 2,400 jobs to plant closings currently planned to take place over the next eighteen months. Six of the 23 plants that have been identified with future closure dates are owned by one of the top ten employers including three plants owned by BASF and one each for Solutia, Dow Chemical and DuPont. These six plant closings will represent approximately 680 jobs and only a fraction of the total these companies employ in the industry.

These top employers of the CPI will collectively spend approximately $800 million in capital and maintenance projects during 2006 based on active project activity currently being tracked by Industrialinfo.com. The largest of these expenditures will be located in Louisiana totaling $220 million and include a new chlorine unit addition planned by PPG, a major Polyols expansion by BASF and an isopropyl unit expansion by ExxonMobil. The average project total investment value (TIV) combining capital and maintenance across the top employers nears $13 million, which is not far from the average TIV across the entire industry for 2006 of $18.7 million per project.

The CPI has enjoyed a strong growth pattern in recent years as noted in a recent Industry Alert titled Chemical Processing Industry Completes 2005 with Fewer Cancellations and Delays than Previous Year. The slight decrease in feedstock cost of recent months matched with a steady demand domestically will help position the industry to begin the year on a very positive note with an encouraging outlook for the remainder of the year.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a Marketing Information Service company that has been doing business for over 22 years. IIR is respected as the leader in providing comprehensive market intelligence pertaining to the industrial processing, heavy manufacturing, and energy-related industries throughout the world.