Tyler–Longview: Health care growth builds on manufacturing, energy legacy

At a glance

Population (2023):	538,707 (metros combined)
Population growth (2016–23):	6.5 percent (Texas: 9.5 percent)
Median household income (2023):	Tyler, $71,923; Longview, $65,210 (Texas: $76,292)
National MSA rank (2023):	Tyler,No. 197*; Longview, No. 174*
*The Tyler and Longview metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) encompass Smith, Gregg, Harrison, Rusk and Upshur counties.

• The area has been a manufacturing hub with an energy underpinning. A growing health care sector has led diversification efforts.
• Health care leads the list of largest employers in Tyler and Longview, the respective county seats of adjacent Smith and Gregg counties.
• Proximity to Interstate 20 has supported logistics and retailing in the area.

History: East Texas oilfield changes agricultural economies

The East Texas communities of Tyler and Longview, though 40 miles apart, share an economic base and history. Tyler’s early economy relied on agriculture and immigration from the Old South before the Civil War. Longview’s growth took off with westward expansion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the early 1870s.

The discovery of the East Texas oil field in the 1930s provided an economic respite for both cities from the Great Depression and shaped their subsequent commercial development.

Tyler is widely known for its rose industry and annual Texas Rose Festival. Local growers turned roses into a major business after peach blight wiped out more than 1 million fruit trees in 1900. The arrival of oil led first to the growth of metal and fabricating industries, and by the mid-1960s, Tyler’s 125 manufacturing plants employed 8,000 workers.

Longview, a cotton and timber town before the oil boom, attracted newcomers from throughout the South to its industrial plants. The Texas Eastman Co., an offshoot of the Eastman Kodak Co. (best known for predigital photography supplies and equipment) located in Longview, was the state’s largest inland chemical complex in the 1950s. The Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. opened what became the state’s largest brewery and associated factory in 1966, producing 4 million barrels of beer annually. The plant closed after its subsequent owner, the Stroh Brewery Co., exited the beer business in 1999.[1]

Although Tyler and Longview are separate metropolitan statistical areas, the neighboring communities’ commercial activities overlap and complement one another.

Industry clusters: Manufacturing and agribusiness lead as health services remain an anchor

Location quotients (LQs), which compare the relative concentration of various industry clusters locally and nationally, are a convenient way of assessing key drivers in an economy. An LQ exceeding 1 indicates that a specific industry cluster carries more relative weight locally than nationally. Industry cluster growth is measured by the percentage-point change in its share of local employment from 2016 through 2023 (Chart 13.1).[2]

Chart 13.1: Agribusiness shines as health services matures

NOTE: Bubble size represents cluster share of metropolitan statistical area employment.
SOURCES: Texas Workforce Commission; Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Clusters in the top half of Chart 13.1 are generally vital to the area’s economy and can be expanding rapidly (“star”) or growing slowly (“mature”) relative to other industries. Those in the bottom half are less dominant locally than nationally. “Emerging” clusters are fast growing; those growing slowly or declining are “transitioning.”

The region’s largest employment cluster remains health services, with a location quotient of 1.3 and more than 38,000 jobs. The two largest employers in Tyler, UT Health East Texas and Christus Trinity Mother Frances Health System, together employ more than 9,500 people. Christus Good Shepherd Medical Center Longview is Longview’s largest employer, with a payroll exceeding 3,000.[3] The University of Texas Health Science Center in Tyler received degree-granting authority in 2005 and is a regional teaching institution as well as a health care provider.

Tyler-based Brookshire Grocery Co., with 1,450 employees, is part of the retail cluster, the second largest in the region, with an LQ of 1.2. Walmart employs 1,500 in Tyler, as well. Interstate 20, linking Tyler and Longview, supports the retail sector and related activities.

The emerging distribution and e-commerce cluster is becoming increasingly important in the area. A Target distribution center in Tyler, with 1,000 workers, is one of the largest employers in the metro alongside Dollar General’s 1-million-square-foot distribution center that employs 760 people in Longview.

The mature machinery manufacturing sector, which is tied to the area’s large energy and mining cluster, has the region’s second-highest LQ, 1.8. Among the largest companies in Tyler are Trane Technologies, with 2,500 employees, and Tyler Pipe, with 430 employees. Longview is home to AAON Coil Products and Komatsu, with more than 600 employees each.

The area has multiple food-processing manufacturers, including John Soules Foods and Sanderson Farms, which employ 1,000 and 1,750 in Tyler, respectively, and MG Foods with 260 employees in Longview.

Distribution and e-commerce, food processing, agribusiness, food services, business services, and real estate, construction and development helped drive economic growth from 2016 through 2023 (Chart 13.2). Agribusiness was the second-fastest growing cluster during this period and includes numerous landscape nurseries as well as Tyler’s famous rose industry.

Chart 13.2: Distribution, food processing and services support Tyler–Longview growth

NOTES: Percent change in employment is shown in whole numbers. Each cluster’s share of total jobs is shown in parentheses (rounded to one decimal place). Clusters with employment shares less than 0.1 percent are not displayed.
SOURCES: Texas Workforce Commission; authors’ calculations.

Average wage growth in Tyler–Longview has shifted with the area’s transition from machinery manufacturing to health services. Wages in health services grew from 2016 through 2023, with workers earning a median wage of $62,586 in 2023. Machinery manufacturing median wages, though above the average, declined 22.9 percent from 2016 through 2023 (Table 13.1).

Machinery manufacturing, while still a sizable employer for the metro area, declined in both LQ and employment share from 2016 through 2023. In Longview, this has resulted in a manufacturing sector that’s smaller than it was prepandemic, with December 2024 employment 4.4 percent below February 2020 levels. This marks a resumption of long-lasting declines, as even prepandemic figures trailed 2009 levels.

The energy and mining cluster remains active, reflecting the legacy of the massive East Texas oil field and the more recently tapped Haynesville shale formation, which mostly holds natural gas. It has been a source of jobs that paid an average of $90,277 in 2023, 66 percent above the average pay of $54,240 for all jobs in the area.

Tyler and Longview were hit hard during the pandemic and each recovered differently. Employment in Tyler fully recovered by year-end 2021 and by December 2024 was 8.3 percent above February 2020 levels. Meanwhile, Longview regained its prepandemic employment nearly a year later in October 2022. This difference is largely due to the cities’ respective industry compositions. The pandemic particularly affected retail and manufacturing, and both are more concentrated in Longview. By comparison, the more substantial health care base in Tyler was a source of strength and a buffer.

Demographics: Lower labor force participation, less education

The Tyler–Longview labor force participation rate of 60.2 percent in 2023 trailed both the state (66 percent) and the nation (63.8 percent).[4]

A larger share of the local population is age 65 or older (17.3 percent) relative to the state (13.8 percent). Notably, the prime-age portion of the population (ages 25 to 54) in Tyler–Longview, 37.1 percent, is nearly four percentage points below the statewide figure. This age distribution reflects a population that is growing older, partly because younger workers tend to move to larger cities.

The local population has spent fewer years in college than the Texas average. The share of the population over age 25 with a bachelor’s degree or higher (24.5 percent) is below the state (34.2 percent). However, this figure is up from 19 percent in 2016. Much of this rise in educational attainment comes with the expansion of the University of Texas at Tyler and other universities in the area.

The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which became law in 2021, could aid new investment in the area, including expanded broadband internet. Tyler and Longview, which have diversified their economies, most notably via a larger health care sector, may draw on federal resources to speed their next development moves.

Notes

1. The history of Tyler and Longview has been adapted from the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas.
2. The percentage shares of individual clusters are normalized to add up to 100 and differ from individual industry share totals. Some industries are ­included in multiple clusters, while some others are omitted because they fall outside revised cluster definitions (See the appendix for more information.)
3. Data for major employers are from Tyler Economic Development Council Inc. and Longview Economic Development Corp.