The Dayton Development Coalition announced a record year for jobs in Ohio at their annual meeting on Wednesday. Economic leaders who spoke at the event said the state is gaining more momentum with new tech projects in southwest Ohio.
The region saw 4,000 new job commitments and over $850 million dollars in investments in the last year — most of which is attributed to the presence of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is the largest single-site employer in the state.
Aerospace company Sierra Nevada Corporation is building an aircraft maintenance facility at the Dayton International Airport. That’s expected to add 150 jobs for the region. There’s also the $20 billion dollar Intel semiconductor plant being built in central Ohio.
With these projects on their way to development, Lt. Gov. John Husted — who attended the meeting, said he’s optimistic those kinds of projects will be what makes Ohio The Silicon heartland.
“You just have to sell what Ohio has. We've had a hard time getting people to pay attention to us. And so now they are,” Husted said. “It's not very often that Ohio is in global economic news for something as the most important semiconductor company in the world.”
Earlier last year, the state budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year was signed by Gov. Mike DeWine. The bill included tax credit incentives for companies considered “megaprojects”.
Some of the requirements include that the company must invest at least $1 billion in a project and compensate employees with an average hourly wage of at least 300% of the federal minimum wage.
Husted said Ohio’s infrastructure, and its low regulation and corporate taxes make the state very attractive to new businesses.
“We make things in Ohio,” Husted said.” We went 30 years ago from being a bad state to new business to today being a good state to do business from our tax and regulatory point of view.”
Alejandro Figueroa is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms.
