Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's economic impact on the area has been estimated at $3.8 billion/year in a study they commissioned. The Center includes both Wake Forest Baptist Health (the Hosptial and affiliates) and Wake Forest University Health Sciences (research and teaching). The $3.8 billion includes both their direct ($1.9 billion in revenue in 2011) and indirect impact - such as job creation from their support services and the jobs created by the money their employees spend. In addition to their workforce of 13,588 full- and part-time employees (they are the largest employer in the county) the study estimated that the Medical Center created another 16,500. A copy of the report can be found here.
In other news, Forsyth County approved the $1.05 million in incentives sought by Inmar Inc. as the company decides to invest $62 million and 212 high-paying jobs here or take that investment, those jobs, and the existing 761 jobs elsewhere. The company complained about finding good talent in the area in their last expansion; the County vote approving the incentives was unanimous.
Wow, Inmar points a gun to Winston-Salem's head and the city itself pulls the trigger. I don't condone giving businesses incentives just because they say "hey, we have this great plan to generate more jobs". I have never seen proof that it works in this region.
ReplyDeleteWe were burned pretty badly by Dell although the City Attorney's did a good job with their clawback provisions: Dell had to give almost all that money back when they didn't meet the promised number of jobs. Incentives do seem like a a race-to-the-bottom but also necessary since everyone else is doing them. Hopefully they will help keep Inmar here; it was interesting to note that the primary reason Caterpillar decided to build a plant here was not the incentives but their meeting with Forsyth Tech - whom they subsequently gave $40 million worth of software.
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