Richmond's largest employers in 2023: VCU Health, Capital One and new additions

The area’s top five employers remain the same. VCU Health tops the list with 13,500 employees; Capital One with its Goochland County campus is second with 13,000 workers; HCA Virginia Health System is third with 11,200 people; Bon Secours Richmond is fourth with 8,516 across its locations; and Virginia Commonwealth University is fifth-largest with 7,832 employees.

The Greater Richmond Partnership is the lead economic development organization for Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties. GRP President and CEO Jennifer Wakefield said the region’s economic strength has always been in the “management of companies and enterprises,” which results in 11 Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in the area.

Several other Fortune 1000 companies have presences here without being headquartered in the area. The real estate information and analytics company CoStar Group, whose headquarters is in Washington, D.C., is one example, having announced its 26-story office complex in downtown Richmond in 2021. CoStar is now No. 20 in the rankings with 1,500 employees and plans for more than 2,000 in the coming years.

Another powerful industry in the region is advanced manufacturing. Wakefield said a large percentage of GRP’s pipeline of projects includes companies in that sector and that historically about one-third of the companies coming here have been in that realm.

“Many of those (manufacturing companies) are food and beverage, which is also its own industry cluster that’s been very strong for us over the last many years,” Wakefield said.

Lego is one example of a major manufacturing company that is yet to make the list after announcing its $1 billion factory in Chesterfield County last year. It is planning to open in the coming year with 500 jobs initially and later grow to 1,700.

The logistics industry has been strong in the region between Interstate 95 and the nearby location of the port. Those jobs have returned drastically since the pandemic.

Amazon is one logistics company that has grown in size, leapfrogging Truist Bank into sixth place by adding 1,000 jobs over the past year for a total of 5,100.

“Companies have been pivoting. Jobs related to supply chain and warehousing have increased over the last few years, but it has contracted when it comes to retail and banking jobs,” Wakefield said. “Many of those have been retail jobs at bank branches.”

Restaurants, hospitality and entertainment industries have rebounded since the pandemic, adding a collective 13,200 jobs between March 2021 and March 2023, according to data from JobsEQ.

Tyson Foods was formerly the 34th-largest employer in the region but dropped of the list this year after the closure of its meat processing plant in Hanover County, which led to the loss of 692 jobs.

In terms of overall industries, the biggest losses came from banks and credit unions (-838), general medical and surgical hospitals (-751), grocery and convenience stores (-543) and research and development services (-522).

According to JobsEQ, the largest job shortages over the coming years will be for specific roles like doctors, nurses, surgeons, management, information technology, and maintenance and repair. The biggest surpluses will come in sales jobs, restaurant jobs and office support.