Sentara, Geico, Stihl top Virginia Beach employer list

Posted to: Business
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By Philip Walzer
The Virginian-Pilot
© December 18, 2011

VIRGINIA BEACH

Stihl Inc. says it’s No. 1 for power tools, but it won’t be No. 1 in size among Virginia Beach companies even after its expansion.

Stihl announced last week that it will expand its U.S. headquarters off Lynnhaven Parkway, adding 52 workers over the next three years. That will bring its employee count at the Beach to 1,944, based on current estimates.

A city report last year listed the manufacturer third in the size of its work force among private employers, behind Sentara Healthcare and Geico. Stihl won’t leapfrog over either of them.

Sentara has 5,088 employees throughout Virginia Beach, Sentara spokeswoman Sharon Hoggard said Friday. Geico, the insurance company, is up to 2,359, wrote Joe Thomas, the regional vice president, in an email.

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We're Not there Yet

Submitted by rfschlegel on Sun, 12/18/2011 at 8:26 am.

Lest we pat ourselves on the back and get too excited that the top three private sector VB employers are great companies in the healthcare, manufacturing and insurance industries, remember that these are single employers. These three companies, combined, only account for 9,391 (admittedly great) jobs, according to these numbers. Even after adding in the City's public sector jobs, there are still a whole lot of VB residents selling T-shirts, working in restaurants, and being generally underemployed.

When I started my business career at Ford Motor Co, I worked at the 18,000-strong Research and Engineering Center in Dearborn, MI, a city of about 100,000. We still have a ways to go.

Dearborn??

Submitted by JC757 on Mon, 12/19/2011 at 2:56 pm.

So why did you leave the paradise of Dearborn MI to move the slums of Virginia Beach? You should move back. I hear Michigan has great real estate prices - you can probably buy a whole town.

Blue collar work

Submitted by glennf1 on Sun, 12/18/2011 at 10:21 am.

You are insinuating blue collar work such as restaurant servers, workers in retail, or in the hospitality industry are beneath you. It takes all economic walks of life to have a healthy economy. If everyone made $200k per year we would have runaway inflation because no one would want to mow lawns or serve your food.