A Scorching Month for RTW Job-Creation

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 August, of 14,537 projected jobs, 10,591 — 72.9 percent — were slated for RTW states:

In the sub-metrics the Foundation scrutinizes, RTW maintained its impressive dominance.

Eighteen 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 one to occur in a non-RTW state.

RTW job creation was particularly impressive given that two enormous distribution centers in non-RTW states were announced last month — QVC in California and Under Armour in Maryland. (Each will employ 1,000 workers.)

Marquee RTW investments included Charles Schwab Corporation’s pick of Texas for a regional campus (1,200 jobs), Deutsche Bank’s expansion of its Florida office (350 jobs), and Honda’s decision to hire 250 new workers at its South Carolina manufacturing facility for all-terrain and side-by-side vehicles.

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.

* Non-border-crossing relocations were not counted, border-crossing relocations were.