April Brings Showers of Jobs to RTW States

The Foundation is tracking announcements of expansions, relocations, and greenfield investments published on Area Development‘s website. Founded in 1965, the publication “is considered the leading executive magazine covering corporate site selection and relocation. … Area Development is published quarterly and has 60,000 mailed copies.” In an explanation to the Foundation, its editor wrote that items for Area Development‘s announcements listing are “culled from RSS feeds and press releases that are emailed to us from various sources, including economic development organizations, PR agencies, businesses, etc. We usually highlight ones that represent large numbers of new jobs and/or investment in industrial projects.”

In April, of 11,468 projected jobs, 8,792 — 76.7 percent — were slated for right-to-work (RTW) states:

The non-RTW figure was highly skewed by Amazon’s choice of New Jersey for two new fulfillment centers, and 2,000 jobs. Take that one investment out of the analysis, and RTW would have grabbed 92.9 percent of all projected employment.

As is usually the case, no projects are to be located in New Mexico.

Twelve domestic companies based in non-RTW states announced investments in RTW states. Just one announcement went the other way.

RTW prevailed in foreign direct investment, too. Seventeen projects are headed to RTW states, with five to occur in non-RTW states.

Two relocations went from non-RTW states to RTW states. None journeyed from RTW to non-RTW.

Marquee RTW wins included a manufacturing facility in Florida for OneWeb Satellites, a company building a “satellite based communications network capable of delivering internet connectivity globally” (250 jobs), the decision by New Jersey-based Creston Electronics to “attract top talent in R&D, customer support, engineering, manufacturing and IT support” in Texas (275 jobs), and India-based Aurobindo Pharma’s choice of North Carolina for a “state-of-the-art national headquarters for specialty pharmaceutical R&D” (275 jobs).

Methodological specifics:

* All job estimates — “up to,” “as many as,” “about” — were taken at face value, for RTW and non-RTW states alike.

* If an announcement did not make an employment projection, efforts were made to obtain an estimate from newspaper articles and/or press releases from additional sources.

* If no job figure could be found anywhere, the project was not counted, whether it was a RTW or non-RTW state.

* Intrastate relocations were not counted, interstate relocations were.