Around the South

QUIZ

In calendar years' 2001-2003 the U.S. lost nearly 2 million net jobs, or about 1.5 percent of the total non-farm employment in the country. How many of those 2 million net lost jobs came from the South. (a) 1.2 million (b) none (c) 212,000 (d) 467,219.

(Scroll down for answer)

Bidding Begins for FTAA Headquarters

Atlanta and Miami have both set their sites on landing the Free Trade Area of the Americas' headquarters. The two southern cities are about 650 miles apart, but Miami is considered the U.S. front-runner because of its trade relationships with Latin America and the Caribbean. Nine other cities are also competing for the headquarters that would bring 11,000 new jobs to the city of choice over a 10-year period.

Citgo Relocating HQ to Houston from Tulsa

Citgo Petroleum announced in May it will move its headquarters from Tulsa to Houston. Citgo will relocate 700 workers to Houston, leaving 300 in Tulsa. The oil and gas producer also announced it will add 150 new jobs at its Corpus Christi facilities and invest more than $800 million there over the next 10 years.

Infineon Invests $1 Billion in Richmond

The move for chipmakers to 300mm wafers is paying off for the Richmond, Va. area. Infineon Technologies is investing $1 billion and adding about 1,000 new workers at its Virginia chip plant. The expansion will enable the plant to produce advanced DRAM chips on 300mm wafers. Production is expected to begin early in 2005.

South's Semiconductor Industry Expanding

In the mid-1990s almost every state in the South courted the semiconductor industry like no other industry. Millions were spent marketing sites for what was believed to be a significant number of new semiconductor startups throughout the region. Two were announced in Virginia in the mid-'90s, yet only one was built there. Texas saw a handful of expansions of existing chip plants. But the expected semiconductor boon of the mid-1990s was a bust.

Last year (calendar year 2003) saw three large semiconductor deals in the South with Texas Instruments, Sematech and Samsung. All of those deals occurred in the state of Texas. The Texas Instruments deal is the first new semiconductor plant to be built in the South in almost eight years.

Infineon Technologies is the latest wafer maker to expand in the South. Infineon announced in April it is expanding its Henrico County (Richmond) semiconductor facility in order to produce 300-mm wafers. The company is investing over $1 billion (that's with a "b") in the deal, which will create another 1,200 new jobs to the 1,700 already working at the plant.

Great Start for Mississippi

The first quarter of 2004 saw companies invest over $476 million in new and expanded projects in the state of Mississippi. Significant announcements in the Magnolia State in the first quarter included those made by FedEx, and auto suppliers' Textron Fastening Systems and Faurecia.

Disney World to Add 2,000 Workers for Summer Season

The South's tourism industry got a boost in May when Disney officials announced they would hire about 2,000 additional workers for the summer season at the Disney World theme park and resort near Orlando. Disney employs nearly 55,000 people in Central Florida.

KPMG Ranks Cost of Doing Business

A KPMG study of 24 U.S. cities with a population of more than 1.5 million reveals Atlanta and Tampa are the two large cities in the South with the lowest cost of doing business. Only Puerto Rico's costs were lower. St. Louis ranked eighth and Houston ranked 18th on the least expensive list while San Jose and New York ranked the most expensive. KPMG's "Competitive Alternatives" study measures 27 location-sensitive business operating costs for 12 specific types of business over a 10-year span. In a similar study of mid-sized markets, Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C. is the least costly city among 11 locations surveyed, Nashville ranked second lowest and Hartford, Conn. was the most expensive place to do business among midsized U.S. cities studied.

Competitive Alternatives Study

(U.S. Cities with population of more than 1.5 million - Bold are Southern Markets)

Cost index figures were created by measuring the combined impact of 27 cost components that are most likely to vary by location. More than 1,000 individual business scenarios were examined, analyzing more than 30,000 items of data. For comparison purposes, the national average was assigned a cost index of 100.0.

Biotech Bill Passes in Georgia

The Georgia Senate has passed a bill to increase the amount of state seed money a life sciences company can receive to $1 million. The bill modifies a statute passed by a voter referendum in 1989. The transactions must be authorized by the state-funded Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech. For a loan to be approved, every state dollar loaned must be matched by $3 from the private sector.

Atlanta Leads U.S. in Single-Family Housing

For the 13th year in a row, the Greater Atlanta metro area led the nation in housing activity, with 53,750 single-family home permits last year, according to the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association. Rounding out the top five housing markets for single-family permits were the metropolitan areas of Phoenix-Mesa, Ariz. with 46,590; Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. with 35,730; Houston with 33,970; and Washington, D.C. with 30,760.

Atlanta Top U-Haul Movers' Destination

Atlanta maintained its No. 1 position in U-Haul's annual 2003 national migration trend report as the city with the most movers arriving for the fourth year in a row. Among cities with more than 10,000 families moving, Miami had the highest percentage of growth, with 7.5 percent more families moving into the area than out. Dallas ranked second behind Atlanta. Houston ranked third, and Chicago and New York came in fourth and fifth respectively.

Kentucky Unveils Tax-Reform Program

Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher has unveiled a tax-reform plan that would repeal the corporate license tax, rendering moot the so-called double tax on Kentucky-based companies that resulted from the decision in the Illinois Tool Works Case. The reform would also reduce the maximum corporate income tax rate to 6 percent from 8.5 percent and create a tax-incentive program to improve the Enterprise Zone program that will expire in a few years. The program would also broaden the corporate tax base to include limited liability entities.

BASF Eyes Baton Rouge

Agra-giant BASF is eyeing Baton Rouge as a possible location for a storage facility at its nearby Geismar site. The decision is pending as the company conducts a study to determine if liquid storage tanks and a logistics center at the Geismar site would reduce costs and enhance environmental performance.

Study Identifies Hottest Job Markets

Business 2.0 magazine recently unveiled the 20 hottest job markets in America. According to a March 2004 article, the cities on the list are estimated to generate 850,000 skilled jobs in the next four years.

The magazine's "boom town" ranking is the first of its kind to measure cities by their capacity to create high-wage jobs. The rankings were formulated in collaboration with econometric research firm Global Insight.

The following are the top 20 boomtowns in America, according to Business 2.0 (Southern markets are bold)

1. Raleigh-Durham, NC
2. San Jose, CA
3. Washington, DC
4. Austin, TX
5. Atlanta, GA
6. West Palm Beach, FL
7. San Francisco-Oakland, CA
8. Middlesex-Somerset, NJ
9. Seattle, WA
10. Boston, MA
11. Sacramento, CA
12. Phoenix, AZ
13. Minneapolis, MN
14. Denver, CO
15. New Haven-Stamford, CT
16. Baltimore, MD
17. San Diego, CA
18. Dallas, TX
19. Charlotte, NC
20. Philadelphia, PA

To create the ratings, 61 metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million were ranked using a weighted formula that includes forecast growth rates in sectors that contain the economy's 10 most skilled occupational clusters, the prevalence of college degrees in the local workforce, and median salary. Close attention was also paid to the percentage of the labor force made up of highly skilled and educated creative-class workers.

Steel Dynamics Scouting for Southern Sites

Indiana-based steel maker Steel Dynamics is scouting manufacturing sites in several southeastern states. The company's New Millennium Building Systems division is undergoing site selection discussions for a new joist and deck fabrication plant that would create about 200 jobs. Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina are in the running.

TVA Launches Supersite Program

The Tennessee Valley Authority has launched an effort to identify large industrial sites in its territories in the South that can accommodate automotive assembly plants and other users of properties of more than 700 acres. Local economic development agencies in TVA service areas are submitting potential sites to the federal power provider. Each megasite will be analyzed in an effort to certify it for use by automotive plants that are sure to announce in the near and far future in the Southern Auto Corridor.

AirTran Opens Pilot Training Center in Atlanta

AirTran recently held the grand opening of its new pilot training center in Atlanta. The facility will be the location of both recurrent and new hire training for the airline's 850 pilots.

Only Two Southern Markets Make Longest Commute List
New York City residents spend an average of about one full week a year getting to work - the longest commute time in the nation among large cities, according to a new ranking of American Community Survey data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. New York City residents take an average of 38.4 minutes to get to work each day - more than five minutes longer than Chicagoans, who face a commute of 32.7 minutes.

Other large cities with populations of 250,000 or more with long commutes include Philadelphia (30.3 minutes), Riverside, Calif. (29.8), Baltimore (29.7), Washington, D.C. (29.4), San Francisco (29.2), Oakland, Calif. (29.1), Los Angeles (28.5) and Boston (28.2).

Florida Has Abundance of Workers

Florida's growing population means that the state could support more jobs, according to recently released analysis of job creation data from the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute and the Florida International University Center for Labor Research and Studies. If job growth in the state had kept up with population growth, Florida would have gained 221,200 more jobs during the period since March 2001.

Eastern States Lead in Graduate Degrees

States with some of the highest concentrations of graduate and professional degree holders tend to be located along the East Coast, according to a new analysis of American Community Survey (ACS) data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The 2002 ACS survey, which looked at graduate-degree attainment for the 25-and-over population, found some of the highest levels of graduate and professional degrees in Massachusetts (14.5 percent), Maryland (14.1 percent), Connecticut (13.7 percent), Virginia (12.9 percent), New York (12.6 percent) and Vermont (12.3 percent). West of the Mississippi River, Colorado and New Mexico stood out with graduate degree rates of 11.5 percent and 11.0 percent, respectively. Graduate and professional degrees include master's, law, medical and doctorate degrees.

Among cities with populations of 250,000 or more, high rates of graduate degree attainment were found in Seattle (19.3 percent), San Francisco (18.5 percent), Atlanta (17.2 percent), Albuquerque, N.M. (16.6 percent), Boston (16.4 percent) and Austin, Texas (16.3 percent).

Of the 231 counties with populations of 250,000 or more in the survey, counties neighboring East Coast cities ranked among the highest in graduate degrees. These included counties in the following metropolitan areas: Washington, D.C. - Montgomery and Howard counties in Maryland (29.2 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively) and Fairfax County, Va. (28.1 percent); New York - New York County (25.7 percent), Westchester County, N.Y. (23.5 percent); and Boston - Middlesex County (21.2 percent) and Norfolk County (19.7 percent). Non-East Coast counties in the top tier included Boulder County, Colo. (24.1 percent) and Washtenaw County, Mich. (23.9 percent).

Texas Benefiting as Golden State Loses Shine

According to recent report from Bain & Co., nearly 40 percent of California companies are planning to move jobs out of that state in the future and most of them are coming to Texas. Of the companies relocating jobs, 35 percent are sending them to Texas-more than all the other 48 states combined. The report cited a number of reasons why Texas fared so well, including the availability of an educated labor pool, the low cost of doing business there, and the fact that Texas is welcoming to business. Planning and zoning approvals, according to the study, take an average of eight weeks in Texas, compared with 33 weeks in California.

Study Examines Strongest Tech Economies

Two southern states are among the strongest five technology economies in the nation, according to a recent study by the Miliken Institute. Maryland came in at number four and Virginia at number five with the top three places going to Massachusetts, California and Colorado. The report analyzed 75 indicators of technology strength to come up with its ranking including: research and development, entrepreneurial activity, education, talent, and the technology sector's prominence in the business community.

Top Five Cities to Live In Are in the South

Relocate America, a Web site that helps consumers find communities that fit their needs, has named the top 100 places to live in the United States in 2004. Communities are nominated by current or past residents or others familiar with the community's benefits. The nominated towns are then compared against education, crime, employment, and housing data for the past year. The top 10 communities receiving the most nominations were:

1. Venice, Fla.
2. Paragould, Ark.
3. Edmond, Okla.
4. Bonita Springs, Fla.
5. Asheville, N.C.
6. Colorado Springs, Colo.
7. Bartlesville, Okla.
8. Carlsbad, N.M.
9. Huntington Woods, Mich.
10. Madison, Wis.

QUIZ ANSWER

Of the 2 million net lost jobs in years' 2001-2003, the South actually gained jobs on a net basis. In fact, non-farm employment in the South between 2001 and 2003 grew by one percent. So the answer is (b) none.