People in Lexington, Nebraska, are reeling after the town’s biggest employer revealed it will shut down early next year, triggering fear and uncertainty across the community.
MS NOW reported Friday from Lexington — the county seat of Dawson County, Nebraska, a place Trump carried easily with more than 74 percent of the vote last year. Tyson, the meatpacking giant that employs about 3,200 workers in the town, will leave all of them without jobs when the facility closes on Jan. 20.
“Have you ever been in a place where you can just feel the pain and the anxiety? That’s what it feels like being here in Lexington, Nebraska,” MS NOW reporter Rosa Flores said. “… People have described to me what’s happening here by using the words ‘catastrophe,’ ‘crisis,’ the feeling of being ‘collateral damage,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘anxiety,’ ‘agony.’”
Business owners in the area told Flores that the local economy began taking a hit almost immediately after Tyson announced the closure. Many of those business owners are immigrants who saved enough to open shops only after years of working at the Tyson plant.
“There’s another business here to my left, down the street. That woman says that people have gone into her store sobbing,” Flores said. “Her sales immediately dropped 10 to 20 percent right after the announcement.”
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Tyson decided to close the Lexington facility as cattle supplies are expected to fall to a 75-year low in 2025. Limited cattle availability drives up production costs for beef products like hamburgers and steaks, while prolonged drought has shrunk grazing land and reduced herd sizes for ranchers.
Nebraska U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn, who is running as an independent against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) next year, accused Tyson of gaming the system by shutting down the plant. He argued that the closure amounts to the company “destroying five percent of America’s beef processing capacity,” given the volume of cattle handled annually at the Lexington operation.
