Report details job losses in food processing industry – Companies leave thousands of Nebraskans unemployed after plant closures
Report details job losses in food processing industry
Companies leave thousands of Nebraskans unemployed after plant closures
JULIE ANDERSON
Omaha World Herald
Jul 12, 2026
A look at the Tyson Plant in Lexington, Neb., on June 25. Tyson Foods announced in November that it would shutter its Lexington beef-processing plant. More than 3,200 people worked at the plant, which closed Jan. 20.
For Nebraska’s important food processing industry, the hits in the past year have just kept coming.
Topping the list was Tyson Foods’ closure of its beef processing plant in Lexington in January, which once employed 3,200 people. That move sent shockwaves through the south-central Nebraska community of about 10,000 people.
In May, WK Kellogg Co. filed a notice indicating that it would close its Omaha plant by mid-August, eliminating 450 positions at the 9601 F St. plant, a plan first announced in 2024. Skylark Meats, an Omaha meat processing plant, also will shutter its doors in August, costing more than 200 jobs.
A new economic report from Creighton University indicates that those losses are adding up: The nine-state region comprised of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota and Arkansas lost a combined 8,000 food processing jobs over the past 12 months, with Nebraska accounting for some 3,900 or nearly half of them, 48.9%.
Overall, however, the Creighton University Mid-America Business Conditions Index indicates that the regional manufacturing sector continues to improve, albeit slowly, said Ernie Goss, a Creighton professor and economist.
Gains are coming from manufacturing output, not jobs. The nine-state region lost manufacturing jobs for the 13th time in the past 15 months, according to the June report. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate that the region lost 15,000 manufacturing jobs over the past 12 months, or about 1%, while the nation shed 47,000 such jobs, or about 4%.
Nebraska lost 4,800 manufacturing jobs over the past 12 months or 4.7% of its manufacturing base, the largest percentage loss across the nine states and second only to Missouri in actual jobs lost.
While most of Nebraska’s losses were in food processing, it’s a particularly important sector for the state, with its vast acres of corn and soybeans and its role in livestock production.
The location quotient for food processing — a statistical measure of the concentration of an industry or occupation in a region compared to the national average — is 3.68, one of the highest in the U.S., Goss said. Anything higher than one indicates a locale is exporting food processing beyond its borders.
"That just tells you how important food processing is in Nebraska," Goss said.
Eric Thompson, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln economist, noted that the Nebraska closures are a combination of individual events.
"We’re actually an excellent place for food processing, because of our abundant and reliable supply of feed, which makes us a great place to raise animals, which makes us an attractive location for processing plants," he said.
Goss, however, said manufacturing jobs overall — with food processing jobs being the focus in Nebraska — have been hurt by federal trade policies, namely tariffs and retaliatory practices.
Exports to China from that sector, for instance, were down between 50% and 60% between the first four months of 2024 and the same period in 2026, the latest data available.
Recently, the U.S. and China have been seeking to roll back tariffs on some agricultural products as both seek to preserve a broader trade truce struck last year, Bloomberg reported.
Other factors in the shedding of food processing jobs, Goss said, include technological advances that are leaving older, less-efficient plants behind and a shrinking cattle herd. The herd, both in Nebraska and the U.S., is at its smallest count since 1960. For companies like Tyson, that increases costs.
Donnie King, Tyson’s president and CEO, alluded to both in a transcript of a February earnings call. The company also scaled back operations at its Amarillo, Texas, plant to a single shift.
Tyson, he said, recognizes the impact on people’s lives and did not make the decision to close the Lexington plant lightly.
"At the same time, we made this necessary choice to right-size our beef operations with a smaller and more efficient footprint, higher capacity utilization and stronger alignment with the long-term outlook for the U.S. cattle herd," he said. "These decisions position us to improve our overall beef capacity utilization and to compete more effectively in the beef business, both now and in the future."
"Continuing to absorb losses like we have been seeing for the past two years is simply unacceptable," he said. "Looking forward, we expect cattle supplies to remain tight throughout 2026 and 2027."
Goss said the Lexington plant, which opened in 1990, was not as technologically advanced as the new Sustainable Beef plant that opened in North Platte in 2025, which operates with about 850 employees.
While some former employees of the Lexington plant moved out or transferred to other locations, others now commute to the North Platte plant via a bus service, according to a recent report by Nebraska Public Media.
It’s funded by the state using federal dollars.
Kellogg’s Omaha plant has operated for more than 80 years, opening in 1942 as the second Kellogg’s manufacturing plant in the U.S.
The closure, the company said in announcing the phased shut-down earlier this spring, is part of a broader effort to consolidate Kellogg’s manufacturing footprint. Production will increase at facilities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ontario, while production will scale back at a Memphis, Tennessee, plant. The Omaha facility is the only one slated for full closure.
Other reports indicate that the breakfast cereal market has struggled for a number of reasons, including younger consumers’ shift toward more portable options like yogurt and breakfast bars.
As for Skylark Meats, Green Bay, Wisconsin-based American Foods Group announced last month that it had decided to close its plant near 110th and I Streets in southwest Omaha so the parent company can focus "on its core business across its network of facilities and enhancing service to our customers."
Thompson, who grew up in the former industrial powerhouse of Buffalo, New York, said older plants tend to go first when businesses restructure.
But the loss of some older operations points to the need to keep trying to grow new ones.
"That’s one of the big lessons here … we’ve got to keep being aggressive at getting more things because we’re always going to have some things closing," Thompson said.
julie.anderson, 402-444-1066, twitter.com/ julieanderson41