Salesforce consulting in Allentown.

The Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, whose figures cover Lehigh and Northampton counties, ranks two competing hospital networks as the region’s largest private-sector employers. Manufacturers make up much of the rest of its list, including a heavy-truck builder, an industrial gases supplier, a medical-device maker, a lighting-controls manufacturer and a crayon and art-supplies brand, along with the electric utility. LVEDC reported in 2018 that the industrial gases supplier was building a new global headquarters in Upper Macungie Township, and wrote in 2026 that the art-supplies brand is now headquartered in Easton. By output, manufacturing is the metro’s largest private sector and health care is second.

LVEDC’s target sectors are life sciences, advanced manufacturing, professional and creative services, and food and beverage manufacturing. It also lists an acoustic-guitar maker, an optics and imaging company’s U.S. arm and a candy maker among the global brands at home in the Lehigh Valley, and it describes a drugmaker’s choice of the region for a new manufacturing facility as a “Historic $3.5B Deal.” For talent, LVEDC counts 11 colleges and universities, among them Lehigh University, Lafayette College and Muhlenberg College, awarding more than 10,000 degrees a year. It also convened a regional technology consortium, with Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania among its partners, to support a CHIPS Act Tech Hub application.