Chattanooga Chamber helps create over 2,000 jobs
Posted August 10, 2006
Chattanooga, Tennessee -- The Chattanooga Area Chamber’s Tell the World! effort played a direct role in projects announced from July 2005 to June 2006 that will create 2,056 new jobs, according to the Chamber’s Chief Economic Development Officer Trevor Hamilton.
"These 2,000 jobs represent more than five times the number of jobs the Chamber assisted in 2003, the year before Tell the World! began," Hamilton said. "The job creation and investment numbers related to the projects the Chamber works directly are perhaps the best indication of the tremendous impact the region’s first comprehensive economic development strategy is having on our economy."
For that reason, the Chamber is adjusting its goals to better reflect its direct efforts in job growth projects during Chattanooga CAN DO, the $10 million, second phase of the Chamber’s initiative to grow the Chattanooga area economy. Chattanooga CAN DO will be conducted from July 2007 to June 2011.
The Chamber is setting four goals that will result from the Chamber’s direct assistance to existing companies considering expansion and out-of-market companies considering where to invest. The goals are to achieve the following during the 4-year initiative:
· Public announcements of job growth projects by 60 companies,
· That they will invest a combined $500 million,
· To create 7,500 new jobs,
· With wages averaging $37,466, which is 10% above Hamilton County’s last available confirmed average wage of $34,060 as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These goals represent a significant increase over current performance, including a 17% increase* in the number of new jobs as compared to the average number of jobs announced through Chamber-assisted projects over the last three years and a 15% increase** in average annual investment for these projects over the same period.
According to the Economic Strategy Center of Atlanta, achieving these goals will have broad impact on the regional economy including:
o The creation of 7,500 additional ripple-effect jobs for a total of 15,573 jobs resulting from the Chamber’s direct efforts
o The expansion of local payrolls by an additional $526,829,533
o Increases in disposable personal income totaling $421,463,629
o Growth in personal consumption by $390,106,735
"Linking the public announcement of Chamber-assisted projects with the resulting economic impact helps us provide the public accountability that has been a hallmark of our economic development strategy since the launch of Tell the World," Hamilton said. "Only the projects we assist directly will count toward achieving the goal. We will also continue to track the net total jobs in the region and other announced projects to offer our investors and the community at large the full economic picture."
Hamilton also pointed out that comparing the new goals to the benchmark of 20,000 net new jobs set for the first phase of the economic development campaign is "an apples and oranges proposition." According to Hamilton, Tell the World!’s net new jobs goal had the advantage of giving a bird’s-eye view of the local economy as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), but the BLS numbers do not accurately reflect the Chamber’s efforts.
"There were two problems with the original goal," Hamilton said. "First, the net new jobs number is influenced by business closures and other factors over which the Chamber has no control. Second, the projects we work and announce today will take 3-5 years on average to reach the full employment numbers which the BLS tracks. As a result, the BLS numbers lag several years behind what we are accomplishing right now. Increasing the overall jobs and flow of commerce in our economy is our ultimate aim, and I think it’s clear that the Chattanooga region has been achieving greater and greater momentum since the launch of Tell the World!, but the federal numbers come too late to give our investors and citizens an accurate, real-time accounting of our efforts."
According to Hamilton, the newly established Chattanooga CAN DO goals appropriately focus on the Chamber’s efforts to support high-wage job creation. "For the last three years, the Chamber has led the region in competing to recruit new manufacturing and office operations while keep existing companies growing," Hamilton said. "That won’t change during the next phase of our comprehensive economic development effort, but our goals will better reflect what we do every day."
