Erie County, PA
A case for writing your next chapter in Erie County.
Business-friendly policy, a strategic Great Lakes location, and a talent pipeline built for what’s next — backed by data you can verify.
Three reasons companies choose to build here — and to stay.
A business-friendly climate
Competitive taxes, active incentive programs, and a coordinated network of economic development partners who actually return calls.
Strategic location, global reach
Pennsylvania’s only Great Lakes port, four interstate highways, an international airport, and intermodal rail — serving the northeast and beyond.
Talent built for what’s next
A skilled, growing workforce supplied by four universities, Pennsylvania’s newest community college, and the nation’s largest medical school.
Strategic location & global connectivity
Erie County sits at the crossroads of the Great Lakes and the northeast corridor. Four interstates, Pennsylvania’s only Great Lakes port, an international airport, and intermodal rail give you optionality on freight and travel that most mid-sized markets simply don’t offer.
Fiber-optic broadband now reaches more than 90% of the county and is still expanding — so your team can work from anywhere, from downtown to lakefront to wine country.
A region investing in itself
Downtown Erie has seen more than half a billion dollars in recent investment — new buildings, museums, a food hall, apartments, and the kind of infrastructure that signals a region on the rise.
Add a transformed Bayfront, a diversifying economy, and a cost of living that punches above its weight, and you’ve got a community positioned to meet the full spectrum of investor criteria.
A diversified base with room to grow
Erie County is home to Erie Insurance — a Fortune 500 company — and the ecosystem of service, technology, and professional firms that orbit it. World-class healthcare, education, and tourism industries operate alongside deep manufacturing roots: locomotives, forges, and hundreds of machine shops.
Distinctive regional strengths in plastics, mold-making, and applied technology sit next to an agricultural economy that includes thousands of acres of wine-grape vineyards — a portfolio resilient enough to weather cycles and ambitious enough to catch the next wave.
The pipeline you need, already here
A broad skills-training network — Pennsylvania’s newest community college, four academic universities, and LECOM, the largest medical school in the country — supplies talent for roles ranging from skilled trades to advanced R&D.
Local employment-service partners and the Erie County Technical School deliver custom training and apprenticeships, so your hiring pipeline starts before day one.
Economic development partners, ready when you are.
A connected network of agencies and programs moving in the same direction — funding, site selection, workforce, and the in-between.
Five institutions feeding the talent pipeline.
From liberal arts and engineering to medicine, Erie’s higher-education footprint punches well above the region’s weight class.
Penn State Behrend
Engineering, business, science
Gannon University
Health, engineering, business
PennWest University
Public university system
Mercyhurst University
Intelligence, arts, sciences
LECOM
Largest U.S. medical school
Every number on this page has a receipt.
Erie County’s open-data portal and the Erie Vital Signs dashboard let you drill into the underlying numbers — economy, workforce, community, education, and more — at county and census-tract level.
We’re here to help make your investment interests a reality.
Reach out to our economic development partners — or talk with the team that compiles the data behind every claim on this page.
Tatiana Bogatova, MBA, Ph.D.
Data Center and GIS Team Administrator
814-451-7335
tbogatova@eriecountypa.gov
Erie County Department
150 East Front Street, Suite 300
Erie, PA 16507
814-451-6336