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early 19th century:
Shipping goods to the Midwest through Erie canal
Shipping all southern goods overseas to Europe
Importing most of the goods for the US from overseas
Financing the Civil War for the Union side
late 19th century-early 20th century:
All kinds of light manufacturing (clothing, shoes, chemicals, foods, etc)
Real Estate
Finance
Services
After WW2:
FIRE + Consulting
Now:
FIRE + banking + management and law consultancy
Advertising (Madison Avenue)
Diamonds/jewelry/gold/platinum group metals
Entertainment including digital media, publishing, mass media, journalism, film
IT including new media, game design, financial technology (fintech), telecoms, etc
Healthcare and biotech
Manufacturing such as food processing, Broadway costumes, crates for shipping fine art, clothing, biodiesel, etc
1800's - Gun / Cannon Manufacturing
Colts Manufacturing
US Fire Arms
Sharps Rifle
1900's to Present - Insurance (We are known as the Insurance Capital of the World)
Aetna
The Hartford
Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance
The Phoenix Companies
Travelers
United Healthcare
and many more
The Hartford economy was dependent on the typewriter!?
Hartford is an interesting city. As a NYer I think of places that look like New Canaan or Greenwich when I imagine Connecticut..I had imagined Hartford to be a town full of classy and snooty WASPs, I was very surprised to see...Hartford
Back then Hartford was one of the main cities in Gun and Cannon Manufacturing. We were actually the wealthiest city in America for many decades now its one of the poorest.
Colt, US Fire Arms, and Sharps Rifle were all based in Hartford. Now Colt is in neighboring West Hartford.
Now Hartford is mostly Insurance and Finance
Hartford is known as the Insurance Capital of the World
Companies such as The Hartford, Aetna, Travelers, United Healthcare, Phoenix Mutual, etc. all have their presence in Hartford.
Hartford has the second highest GDP in the country and one of the highest in the world.
Manufacturing was huge in the Chicago area. It's been replaced by a lot of professional, health/education and tourism jobs.
These are just from 1990, if you go back to the 1960's and 1970's it was much more heavily manufacturing. Most of those jobs left during the 70's and into the 80's. The largest chunk of blue collar left is transportation/trade/utilities/warehousing which has around 1,100,000 jobs and hasn't changed much in decades.
Manufacturing:
1990: 925,000
2014: 575,000
Professional
1990: 570,000
2014: 920,000
Health/Education
1990: 530,000
2014: 900,000
Leisure/Tourism
1990: 380,000
2014: 555,000
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