TD Ameritrade’s Effect on the Omaha Economy

One of the largest companies in the Omaha area, TD Ameritrade, employs over nine thousand people, and over two thousand people in Omaha. Many of these employees will be displaced because of the recent acquisition of TD Ameritrade by competitor Charles Schwab.

This means many unanswered questions for the economic future of both Omaha and Nebraska. Omaha has been a growing economy, but as of late has been slowing down. Over the next few years all TD Ameritrade employees will either be fired or relocated to places like Chicago or Dallas. This will have a drastic effect on Omaha. If we were to make a conservative estimate of how many people that could make leave Omaha, we are still looking at close to three thousand people leaving Omaha.

In today’s economic climate people find themselves wanting and having to leave Omaha, more then people find themselves moving to Omaha. The closing of TD Ameriterade will only worsen the already slowing economy of Omaha.

For now many employees of TD Ameritrade will still be payed for another year or two depending on the position they have at the company. This means that the effects of this will not be felt in Omaha for another year at least.

This could begin to be a trend for many Omaha companies. Omaha is obviously not on of Americans big name cities, so it could be very likely that in the future many of these Omaha based companies can be bought out by other large companies based in larger cities. After all, Omaha just does not have the market that New York City, Houston, or Chicago have.

Lucky for some of the TD Ameritrade workers, Omaha for now have enough job opportunities to hire some of the employees that are inevitably going to be laid off. The Omaha metro has a very diverse economy to keep up with at least some of the mass layoffs that will be taking place soon.

For Schwab, this makes them the clear cut giant in broke-dealer industry with their amazing infrastructure and client base. The reason the deal was so dragged out was because the government was deciding whether or not this was a potential monopoly. They eventually decided it was not and thus TD Ameritrade was bought out.

This is a big deal for the future of Omaha’s economy. It has been good for many years, but has begun to slow down. The closing of TD Ameritrade may help to shape the future of Omaha’s economy for the future to come. We will find out soon if this will have a negative effect on Omaha’s economy.