ECONOMY of cleveland
Cleveland is a major US city and the 25th largest economy in the United States. Cleveland has a vibrant and diverse economy and is the headquarters of the Fourth District of the US Federal Reserve Bank.
Once a mighty industrial giant, as manufacturing moved south and overseas, Cleveland has since transformed to a service-based economy. Cleveland is the leading center of medicine in the world and is known globally for medical research, biotechnology, med tech, and healthcare. In addition to numerous research organizations and biotechnology companies in the city, patients travel to Cleveland from over 130 countries per year for treatments at the Cleveland Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic is also exporting its expertise, having opened the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in 2015, Cleveland Clinic Canada in 2017, and Cleveland Clinic London in 2022. Additionally, the Clinic has five hospitals in Florida.
Other key industries in Cleveland include advanced manufacturing, law, aerospace (Cleveland is home to NASA’s vast Glenn Research Center), banking, insurance, technology, education, and polymers and materials. As a center of capital and management, Cleveland is a well-established headquarters city for both US and foreign firms and ranks 14th among US cities for headquarters of Fortune 1000 companies. Industries in the city benefit from the many prestigious institutions in Cleveland, including Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals of Cleveland, and a long history of industry, manufacturing, and innovation.
Metropolitan Cleveland is home to nine (9) Fortune 500 companies on the 2026 list and 18 companies on the Fortune 1000. In the full Cleveland Consolidated Statistical Area (CSA), Cleveland is home to 21 companies.
The nine companies on the Fortune 500 are, in order and rank:
51 Progressive Insurance
104 Sherwin Williams
224 Parker Hannifin
233 Cleveland Cliffs
239 Goodyear
307 First Energy
386 Key Corp
448 Avery Dennison
449 Trans Digm
The nine additional companies rounding out the Fortune 1000:
507 RPM
683 Medical Mutual
724 Applied Industrial Tech
756 Lincoln Electric
810 Hyster Yale
857 Scott's Miracle Gro
877 Avient
973 Nordson
979 CBIZ
986 Masterbrand
The other three companies in the Cleveland CSA and their rank:
456 JM Smuckers
721 Timken
804 Diebold Nixdorf
In terms of sectoral employment, education and health services is the city’s largest sector, followed by trade, transportation, and utilities; then professional and business services. Manufacturing is now ranks fifth, while government ranks fourth. The city’s largest employer, The Cleveland Clinic, is officially not-for-profit, and hence is not part of the Fortune 500 List presented above; but would likely be ranked around 235 if it were on the list.
Additionally, the city of Cleveland is also the US Headquarters of the Elite Initiatives unit of the London Stock Exchange.
Moreover, and very rare amongst American cities, Cleveland has a strategically located airport right downtown, Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL/KBKL), similarly positioned as London’s City Airport serving the central business district. BKL’s longer runway of 6604 feet makes it only 399 feet shorter than New York LaGuardia’s longer runway. The airport can handle 757s and similar aircraft in commercial service. (A photo of the airport can be seen here.)
The city’s 2023 GDP was $220.4 Billion, making Cleveland the 25th largest economy in the United States. Cleveland is the largest economy in the state of Ohio. Metropolitan Cleveland’s economy is the combination of the Cleveland MSA and Akron MSA given that it is one trading area and that some Cleveland suburbs fall within the Akron MSA vs the Cleveland MSA, given that MSA boundaries use county lines versus urban area boundaries. (The second largest urban economy in Ohio is Cincinnati, at $198.9B [30th in the US], followed by Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo.) On the media market front, Cleveland is the 19th largest media market in the US, per Nielsen Media Research, with 1.6 million households for 3.9 million people.
LOCATION, TIME ZONE, & AREA CODES
]Cleveland is in the US Eastern Time Zone; it is the same time zone as New York City, the ideal US time zone, which maximizes business hours overlap with Europe and Africa. The core city of Cleveland area code is 216. However, the full Cleveland region has five local area codes: 216 is in the city’s core and certain close-in suburbs, 440 and 436 in the Eastern and Western suburbs, and 330 and 234 in the Southern region of Cleveland. Being in the US, the country code is +1.