Incentives for companies in Georgia sometimes don’t deliver promised jobs

[jpatlanta]

Originally Posted by noah

Sorry but I find this funny. No jobs but the builders are building all these $1 million houses?

Most people buying homes in that range and above have a choice where they live and its generally not based on work. Over a certain net worth its not about the tax rate either. Its about environment and culture. The good thing of wealth is you can choose where you live and what you buy not based on price but on quality. This is the reason rich people live in NYC and SF. Same reason you can drive a Porsche rather than a Kia. The whole tax breaks for business location moves is just a scam on local tax payers. Money that should go to our schools, parks and infrastructure instead goes to rich owners and investors who actually spend the money back in NYC, SF and Europe.

[samiwas1]

It's funny...I was just talking about this subject with a friend yesterday. My opinion is that I'm for incentives/tax breaks IF a company if going to make a major impact on the area. Some company who's going to create 50 average jobs shouldn't get any sort of incentive. A business who might create thousands of jobs and cause other growth? That's a different story.

Although I'm biased because I work in the entertainment industry and expect to gain from this, I support the incentives for the film industry here. Not only will they hopefully have hundreds or thousands of people working directly for movie sets around the metro area, but new/expanded companies will have to support them as well (equipment suppliers, generator companies, catering services, etc). This creates more jobs. And then you have hotels, restaurants, and other businesses benefitting from the extra people being around. All in all a good thing.

[Mutiny77]

Key Reforms: Clawbacks | Good Jobs First

[JoeTarheel]

Originally Posted by Mutiny77

Key Reforms: Clawbacks | Good Jobs First

Clawbacks! I couldn't think of the word earlier...that's they are called.

[jeoff]

The article was very informative, but the picture that it paints is not nearly as bad as some of the posts seem to be saying.
The only company from the top ten recipients that did not either add or save jobs, returned about 75% of the grant they received. 50% delivered what they claimed, or exceded it. They had to compete to get Kia, Honda, Caterpillar,Baxter, but other Georgia companies now support those companies (just last week, Caterpillar awarded a Georgia manufacturer a bid to supply parts for its new Athens palnt --yieldeing an additional 150 jobs.)

Many, if not all, states use incentives to attract new businesses, so I don't know how this reflects badly on Georgia. It is a game that all states play, and Georgia is really not doing that badly.

[testa50]

Originally Posted by Atlanta_BD

These business are basically promising Georgians jobs so they can "steal" our tax money. They are basically lying to get the money, then once the time runs out for them to get these incentives, they start laying off, then close up shop and leave the state altogether. The ones that do stay recruit out of state. It's pathetic, sad, and maddening.

People think I just hate on Atlanta/Georgia for the sake of hating on it. But this story just confirms what I've been saying all along about the job market and that the government and the citizens of this state are so desperate for Atlanta to get recognition and attention with these businesses moving here that we are allowing ourselves to be used by these companies who aren't adding any real benefit in the long run.

People aren't putting two and two together when we keep posting all of these threads about all these businesses moving here but yet the job market still sucks. I've had many people tell me that they came here for work only to be laid off shortly there after or can't keep jobs here. This is why. These businesses are taking this incentive money then running. And you constantly see posts from people moving here for great paying jobs from out of state, yet the locals either can't find work or are offered low wages. You think this is all a coincidence?

Not only are business coming here and not truly creating jobs, you have all these developers building shoddy housing with crappy pseudo-great amenities and charging exorbitant prices (we're going to charge you almost $1 million to have the luxury of being walking distance to Target but have hell driving to work every day) when there are still no jobs. It's ridiculous!

The bolded assumption underlies your entire argument, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

Comparing with Chicago, for instance, we are undoubtedly performing better at present. Metro Atlanta's latest unemployment rate is 7.9%, in comparison with Chicago's at 9.5%. Atlanta's 12-month job growth is at 2.4%, compared with Chicago's at 1.1%. Atlanta has added more jobs than Chicago over the last 12 months, despite being roughly half the size of Chicago. Atlanta's job market is down 2.8% from its peak-year (2008) March employment level, while Chicago's is down 3.3%.

These indicators can be found here:

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA Economy at a Glance
Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI Economy at a Glance

Wages are harder to address, since I don't believe they are calculated on an MSA basis. Fulton's average wage ($1,165) is about 10% higher than Cook's ($1,056), but Fulton accounts for a smaller chuck on metro Atlanta's job market (it represents about 1/3) than Cook does in Chicago (it represents >1/2). This favors Fulton; the outlying suburban markets (Cobb, Gwinnett, Clayton, and Dekalb) all have lower average wages than Cook by 10-15%. All told, Chicago's average wages are probably higher than metro Atlanta's, by maybe 5% or so. Nothing dramatic.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cewqtr.pdf

I think a lot of the negatives you are seeing are just a reflection of a pretty blah national economy, rather than something Atlanta-specific. Atlanta sputtered terribly in 2009, but since then has evened itself out with the national economy as a whole (thankfully most of our current growth isn't in bubble-fueled sectors like it was before).

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by testa50

The bolded assumption underlies your entire argument, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

Comparing with Chicago, for instance, we are undoubtedly performing better at present. Metro Atlanta's latest unemployment rate is 7.9%, in comparison with Chicago's at 9.5%. Atlanta's 12-month job growth is at 2.4%, compared with Chicago's at 1.1%. Atlanta has added more jobs than Chicago over the last 12 months, despite being roughly half the size of Chicago. Atlanta's job market is down 2.8% from its peak-year (2008) March employment level, while Chicago's is down 3.3%.

These indicators can be found here:

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA Economy at a Glance
Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI Economy at a Glance

Wages are harder to address, since I don't believe they are calculated on an MSA basis. Fulton's average wage ($1,165) is about 10% higher than Cook's ($1,056), but Fulton accounts for a smaller chuck on metro Atlanta's job market (it represents about 1/3) than Cook does in Chicago (it represents >1/2). This favors Fulton; the outlying suburban markets (Cobb, Gwinnett, Clayton, and Dekalb) all have lower average wages than Cook by 10-15%. All told, Chicago's average wages are probably higher than metro Atlanta's, by maybe 5% or so. Nothing dramatic.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cewqtr.pdf

I think a lot of the negatives you are seeing are just a reflection of a pretty blah national economy, rather than something Atlanta-specific. Atlanta sputtered terribly in 2009, but since then has evened itself out with the national economy as a whole (thankfully most of our current growth isn't in bubble-fueled sectors like it was before).

Then why do people still struggle to find jobs here? We can even look at these threads to see that people can't find work and that jobs are very hard to get in Atlanta. This is something I am trying to understand. If all if is growth is happening, why are jobs so hard to get here?

[testa50]

Originally Posted by Atlanta_BD

Then why do people still struggle to find jobs here? We can even look at these threads to see that people can't find work and that jobs are very hard to get in Atlanta. This is something I am trying to understand. If all if is growth is happening, why are jobs so hard to get here?

Because they're hard to get everywhere, it would seem. Even in Houston, which people view as the land of milk and honey these days, the unemployment rate is 2 percentage points higher than it was in Atlanta circa 2007. And it's not like in Atlanta circa 2007 jobs grew on trees; people still spent enormous effort finding jobs and sometimes people had prolonged dry spells. So the far-and-away strongest-performing city in the country has a job market that is a good bit more competitive than Atlanta's was in the mid-2000s, and Atlanta's wasn't exceptionally good by any means back then.

The problem is just that the economy in general isn't that great. The 2009 recession was very, very bad, and the recovery will take years (and could stall out at any point). The economic damage it inflicted in the current younger generation is permanent.

Nonetheless, the BLS data is standardized and certainly a better means of comparison than anecdotal evidence from our personal lives or this forum. There could be arguments for one metric or another favoring one city or another (labor force growth, for instance), but none of these would be big enough to suddenly paint Atlanta as a major laggard or something (actually our workforce size has been growing robustly, which keeps our unemployment rate higher than it would be if it were stagnant like, say, Birmingham's).