Kansas

Kansas Exports and Foreign Investment

In 2024, Kansas exported a record $14.4 billion of goods to the world.  In 2022, exports from Kansas supported an estimated 66 thousand jobs (latest data available).

Exports from Kansas and Jobs

• Kansas was the 30th largest state exporter of goods in 2024.
• In 2024, Kansas goods exports were $14.4 billion, an increase of 19 percent ($2.3 billion) from its export level in 2014.
• Goods exports accounted for 6.3 percent of Kansas GDP in 2023 (latest data available).
• Kansas goods exports in 2022 supported an estimated 66 thousand jobs (latest data available). Nationally, jobs supported by goods exports pay up to an estimated 18 percent above the national average.

Manufacturing Exports from Kansas and Jobs

• In 2024, Kansas exported $12.6 billion of manufactured products.
• Kansas exports of manufactured products supported an estimated 44 thousand jobs in 2022 (latest data available).
• The state's largest manufacturing export category is transportation equipment, which accounted for $3.4 billion of Kansas's total goods exports in 2024.
• Other top manufacturing exports are food & kindred products ($3.3 billion), computer & electronic products ($1.6 billion), machinery, except electrical ($1.2 billion), and chemicals ($1.1 billion).

Exports Sustain Thousands of Kansas Businesses many of which are SMEs

• A total of 3,371 companies exported from Kansas locations in 2022 (latest data available). Of those, 2,814 (84 percent) were small and medium sized enterprises with fewer than 500 employees.
• Small and medium-sized firms generated 21.2 percent of Kansas's total exports of goods in 2022.

Kansas Depends on World Markets

• The state’s largest market was Mexico. Kansas exported $3.1 billion in goods to Mexico in 2024, representing 22 percent of the state’s total goods exports.
• Mexico was followed by Canada ($2.6 billion), Japan ($1.1 billion), China ($823 million), and the United Kingdom ($543 million).
• Kansas’s exports to major world areas included:

 

• 51 percent of Kansas’s goods exports ($7.3 billion) in 2024 went to current FTA partners.  

Agriculture in Kansas depends on Exports

Kansas is the country’s 8th largest agricultural exporting state, shipping $7.2 billion in domestic agricultural exports abroad in 2022 (latest data available according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture). 

Top Agricultural exports were:

	2022 Value	2022 State Rank
beef and veal	$1.6 billion	2
wheat	$1.4 billion	2
soybeans	$1.2 billion	11
corn	$884 million	7
feeds and other feed grains	$733 million	6

International Investment Creates Jobs in Kansas

• In 2022 (latest data available), foreign-controlled companies employed 73,200 Kansas workers. Major sources of foreign investment in Kansas included Germany, Canada and Switzerland.
• Foreign investment in Kansas was responsible for 6.1 percent of the state's total private-industry employment in 2022.

Kansas’s Major Metropolitan Areas Benefit from Exporting
In 2023 (latest data available), the following metropolitan areas in Kansas recorded goods exports: Joplin ($321.5 million), Kansas City ($10.6 billion), St. Joseph ($830.1 million), Lawrence ($98.5 million), Manhattan ($103.3 million), Topeka ($445.4 million), and Wichita ($4.5 billion).