Mt. Bachelor ski area jumped from the fifth largest employer to the No. 2 slot in this year’s look at the region’s biggest private employers list assembled by Economic Development for Central Oregon.

Coming in No 1., just as it has for the past six years, is St. Charles Health System, with 4,400 employees, according to the roundup. Mt. Bachelor employed 1,081 people in the first quarter of 2023, compared to 894 in the same period the year before.

The list, assembled by the nonprofit for the past 22 years, uses self-reported information from private employers in Central Oregon. Together, the top 50 employers employ 20,900 workers.

In communities with a sizable retirement community, it’s natural for the top employer to be a health care provider, said Jon Stark, Economic Development for Central Oregon CEO. What makes Central Oregon different is the strength of so-called traded sector businesses, those that produce goods and services locally but conduct the majority of their business outside of the community.

“We are very fortunate to have a health care system that serves smaller communities like (St. Charles) does,” Stark said. “What we’re seeing in our economy that is coming out of two years of a pandemic is that our traded sectors are catching up.”

EDCO’s goal is to encourage new businesses to diversify the economy and to bring well-paid jobs with them.

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Coming in third on the list is Bright Wood Corp. in Madras with 1,079 employees, compared to 1,030 in 2022, according to the list. Les Schwab headquarters and tire centers comes in No. 4, a position it’s held for the past three years. The tire company, which began in a small shop in Prineville in 1952, employs more than 7,000 people nationwide, according to EDCO.

No. 5 is Sunriver Resort, which dropped from third to fifth in the annual ranking, but employed 900 people, down from 1,000 the same period the year before.

The list also has some movement, too. BasX Solutions, a data center cooling and HVAC company in Redmond, moved from ranking 16th in terms of employment to No. 9 with 528 employees. The company was acquired in 2021 by Aaon Inc., a publicly traded company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for $180 million. Last year, the company employed 340 people.

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“Bringing in new production capacity allowed us to sell the capacity,” said co-founder Matt Tobolski. “As we turned the corner to 2022, a lot of the investment and aggressive sales to support the investment, came into fruition.

“Exceptional growth drove the increase in staffing.”

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Central Oregon’s successes at bringing new business to the region is remarkable, but not unexpected, Stark said. By targeting manufacturing and traded sector employers, wages tend to be higher and that helps build a strong economy, he said.

“EDCO’s team annually engages with more than 400 traded-sector businesses, equipping them with necessary tools and resources to tackle various challenges such as workforce, access to capital, incentives, land use, physical space needs, permitting, and other hurdles,” Stark said in a prepared statement.

“As the backbone of Central Oregon’s economic stability, these employers have been instrumental in driving employment growth across the region, and we’re proud of their contribution to our community.”