Tyson Foods will close six plants, laying off 4,600 workers, leaving employees in rural counties with few options

David Handy at a Tyson poultry plant in rural Noel, Mo.
(Photo by Chase Castor, NBC News)

Six rural counties with Tyson Foods chicken processing plants are steeling themselves for job and revenue losses after the food behemoth announced it is closing plants in four states — Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas and Virginia — laying off "more than 4,600 workers who have long relied on its outsize presence as a local employer,” reports J.J. McCorvey of NBC News. In Noel, Mo., pop. 2,124, Tyson employs 1,500 workers who will lose jobs this October. The income loss will be felt throughout the county of 23,000 in the state's southwestern corner. Bryan Hall, the presiding county commissioner, "said Tyson provided so much of the area’s employment that the plant closure means a quarter of McDonald County’s jobs will vanish this fall."

David Handy, who has worked at the Noel plant for five years, is an example of a dominating employer's profound effect on one rural family's incomes. McCorvey explains: "Handy, 40, said he found the Tyson job soon after moving with his family in 2018 from California. . . . Until now, the company has provided economic stability for his entire household. Handy’s 21-year-old son works at the processing plant as well, and his 17-year-old daughter planned to join them after she graduates from high school next year." Handy told him, “This is really financially crushing. Our sole income is from this company. . . . Starting over is scary."

Over the past two years, the poultry industry suffered losses from the global avian flu outbreak, increasing grain prices and inflation. McCorvey reports, “While inflation has fallen, grocery prices remain high, and meat sales have slowed industrywide, contributing to Tyson’s $417 million loss in the last quarter. . . . But Tyson has also struggled with its own inefficiencies, said Kristoffer Inton, a Morningstar analyst who covers the company." Inton told McCorvey: "The cost of feed went up, but that affected everybody. You could probably chalk up some of it to stuff that affected the entire industry and some of it to [things] Tyson should have done better.”

McCorvey adds, "Laid-off plant workers’ fortunes might hinge on where they live. In North Little Rock, Arkansas, where Tyson employs 300 people in a community of 65,000 abutting the state capital’s metro area, other big companies such as Amazon and Costco have expanded." When its plant closes, laid-off employees will having an easier time finding a new job and the overall region has the economic capacity to shoulder the loss, but for residents from smaller, more rural towns, replacing their Tyson incomes will be tougher.