The Southern Auto Corridor’s 10 Largest New and Expanded Manufacturing and Selected Non-Manufacturing Job Announcements

Announcements Made in the Summer 2022 Quarter

Company	Jobs	$Inv	N/E	Location	Description
1. Toyota	1,000	$2,500	N	Randolph Co., N.C.	EV batteries
2. Mercedes-Benz	1,000	N/A	E	Tuscaloosa Co., Ala.	Electric vehicles
3. Ascend Elements	400	$300	N	Hopkinsville, Ky.	EV parts
4. Hankook Tire	397	$612	E	Clarksville, Tenn.	Tires
5. Bosch	350	$200	E	Anderson, S.C.	EV fuel cells
6. Eberspaecher	250	N/A	N	Louisville, Ky.	Auto parts
7. ATC Drivetrain	218	$8	N	Knoxville, Tenn.	Auto powertrains
8. MP Materials	150	N/A	N	Fort Worth, Texas	Rare earth magnets
9. Nippon Denkai	100	$150	N	Augusta, Ga.	EV parts
10. Shinhwa Auto	42	$78	E	Auburn, Ala.	Auto parts

The Southern Auto Corridor’s 10 Largest New and Expanded Manufacturing and Selected Non-Manufacturing Job Announcements

Announcements Made in the Spring 2022 Quarter

Company	Jobs	Investment	N/E	Location	Description
1. Hyundai	8,100	$6,000	N	Savannah, Ga.	Electric vehicles
2. Envision AESC	2,000	$2,000	N	Bowling Green, Ky.	EV batteries
3. Volkswagen	1,000	N/A	E	Chattanooga, Tenn.	Auto assembly
4. Nissan	600	$500	E	Canton, Miss.	Electric vehicles
5. Nucor	500	N/A	E	Mason Co., W.Va.	Automotive steel
6. Schneider Electric	400	$100	N	El Paso, Texas	Auto parts
7. Volvo	360	$41	R	Greensboro, N.C.	Financial services
8. Toyota	220	$222	E	Huntsville, Ala.	Engines
9. Nucor	200	$350	N	Lexington, N.C.	Automotive steel
10. Hyundai	200	$300	E	Montgomery, Ala.	Electric vehicles

The Southern Auto Corridor’s 10 Largest New and Expanded Manufacturing and Selected Non-Manufacturing Job Announcements

Announcements Made in the Winter 2022 Quarter

Company	Jobs	Investment	N/E	Location	Description
1. Vinfast	7,500	$2,000	N	Chatham Co., N.C.	Electric vehicles
2. Carvana	3,500	N/A	E	Atlanta, Ga.	Used vehicles
3. Mazda Toyota	1,200	N/A	E	Huntsville, Ala.	Auto assembly
4. GreenPower Motor	900	N/A	N	Charleston, W.Va.	Electric buses
5. Envirotech	800	N/A	N	Osceola, Ark.	Electric trucks
6. DeLorean Motor	450	N/A	N	San Antonio, Texas	Headquarters
7. Aspen Aerogels	250	$300	N	Bulloch Co., Ga.	EV parts
8. Alkegen	250	N/A	R	Irving, Texas	EV parts
9. Proterra	200	$176	E	Spartanburg, S.C.	Electric buses
10. Arrival	150	$11	E	Charlotte, N.C.	EV parts

By Michael Randle

Out of nowhere, just about every industry in the U.S. faced a chip shortage crisis in recent years, particularly the last five years. We should have known.

Beginning in the early 1990s, many U.S. and foreign-based companies outsourced semiconductor production to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia. The Japanese were already big chip producers, but back then, it was all about costs and the U.S. and Japan could not compete with China.

That was the case until Asian wages, including those in China and Malaysia, went through the roof. Because of that, in about 2009 the word “reshoring” was invented. The idea was this: U.S. wages had stagnated for years, but that was a good thing to major manufacturers. All of a sudden, a manufacturer could produce goods – in the South, anyway – for about the same costs as in China, factoring in rising wages, shipping costs and others issues surrounding making something halfway around the world for U.S. consumption.

In the mid-2000s, after manufacturers of every sector known, left the U.S. in a herd mentality to Asia and Mexico, major corporations were all for free trade. They could make stuff and pay $2-an-hour. It might not have been well-made stuff, but it was made and it was bought to be assembled right here in the USA.

It was about then that corporate minds began to wonder. Why are we producing things over there when we can make them here for about the same costs? At the center of the issue was the semiconductor industry and literally giving China a free pass on intellectual knowledge developed here in the U.S. Computer chips made in China, some as old as 10 years, were being used by American industry and amazingly, still are. Something had to change and it did.

Several multi-billion dollar projects have been announced in Texas and North Carolina in the last year are undeniably being made to counter the Asian issue and the availability of chips for every industry that uses them. Yet, when the automotive industry noticed the problem with a shortage crisis, which seemed to tip the scale.

Two big deals announced in Texas last fall will eventually come to the economy’s rescue. Texas Instruments announced it plans to invest up to $30 billion to build as many as four new semiconductor fabrication plants in Sherman, Texas. TI said it will begin construction in 2022 on the first two plants producing its 300-millimeter wafers used in everything from cars and trucks to industrial machinery. The plants could house up to 3,000 workers when complete. The other big semiconductor facility is by South Korea chip manufacturer Samsung Electronics. It will build a second chip facility in the Austin area in Taylor, Texas. The plants will house thousands of workers.

The rumors

Micron Technology is the latest high-tech giant to consider the Austin area for a multibillion-dollar manufacturing operation. According to the Austin American Statesman, the company was checking out sites near Lockhart, Texas, according to its applications for tax breaks filed with the state comptroller’s office. The investment would total at least $20 billion, but much higher from 2030 to 2040. However, Idaho-based Micron chose a site near Syracuse, N.Y. for its latest venture.

On a much bigger scale, South Korea-based Samsung, which already operates a computer chip plant in Austin and currently building another nearby in Taylor, Texas, is considering 11 new fabrication plants in Central Texas. The projects could top out at $200 billion. The potential plans are described in 11 applications Samsung has filed with the Taylor and Manor school districts seeking tax breaks for building the facilities.

North Carolina has also gotten in to the semiconductor reshoring “herd mentality” act. North Carolina-based Wolfspeed is building a $5 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant, it was announced in September. The company is a world leader in silicon carbide semiconductor manufacturing. The $5 billion being invested is the largest capital investment for an economic development project in North Carolina’s history. The project, located on a site in Siler City, N.C., near the Research Triangle, will create 1,800 new jobs.

Back in the 1990s, every state in the South clamored for semiconductor plants that represent billions in investment and house thousands of good-paying jobs. Since few media properties had websites back then, many of Southern Business & Development’s ads purchased in the print product were about how well-suited this place or that place was for semiconductor manufacturing. I think during that, the South may have landed three chip facilities.

But, by then, it was too late. We had already started the massive offshore massacre that devastated the middle-class in this country. It was the “giant sucking sound,” that Ross Perot phrased during his 1992 US presidential campaign; referring to the sound of U.S. jobs heading south for Mexico should the free-trade agreement go into effect. Mexico got our share of jobs, but China got the lion’s share.

Maybe now, too late has become very early in the reshoring of manufacturing to the U.S. It is just a matter of laws set forth by our lawmakers and how competitive we remain.

By Michael Randle

We have already written about the void in labor availability and we have for years. That’s been an issue for more than a decade, but it hasn’t been brought to the attention of the mainstream folks – or even some so-called experts — until recently.

Some very smart people still are not familiar with our worker shortages or the reasons behind the shortages. I was tooling around town one Saturday morning this summer, listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition,” when some Ted Talk dude was interviewed. His Ted Talk subject was about the fact that young couples are reluctant to have children because they do not believe they can afford a child. Uh, truly? That is not news, there, amigo. Ha estado sucediendo durante años!

He went on to “reveal” that the challenges in the labor department facing this country “could” have a dramatic effect on the economy as a whole, including funding of social services most of us have paid for, including Social Security and Medicare.

Really? And the Ted Talk editors approved him as a presenter? That means the Ted Talk program’s upper management – and even its editor — does not know much about the issue because it has been around for a long time in this country, most notably in the Northeast and Midwest, two regions that are losing population to the West and the South each year in herds.

So, again, we have written repeatedly about the labor situation, which is dire. Then the pandemic arrived and to the fault of no one, the nation’s economy hit rock bottom the first half of 2020 and improved slightly in the second half.

Since, it has been revived, but few are sure of where the economy is going, up or down. We are not in a recession, as some claim. We may be soon enough. But the lack of knowledge of where we are going is so disturbing if a “Ted Talk” presenter is just getting the message that was clear-as-day eight years ago.

By Michael Randle

Southern Business & Development is evolving into what we think is a more enjoyable and pleasant report on business and economic development in the South (the print and online product that is the umbrella of RandleReport.com).

Our – speaking for us, not you – competitive nature of slamming other regional economies such as the Midwest and Northeast (rightly so, but so tacky and out-of-date) is over with.

My (our) insecurities of media portraying the South as a backwater place to live, work, own a business and expand to, we do not care about that anymore. Your inaccurate, decades-ago, history-based content no longer pisses us off. We know we were a single-minded duck for 100 years. But now, or for the last 40 years, the South’s economy has thrived like no other regional economy. We were a duck on the world stage. We are now a beautiful swan.

My (our) insecurities are eliminated by data that clearly shows this region is indeed the economic engine of the largest economy on earth. Anxiety, anger, depression, insecurity, a feeling of not being connected with the rest of the world is no longer an issue with us Southerners and its leaders.

The South rules economically and has for a long time. After all, based on GDP, the largest economies in the world are the U.S., China and the 15 states that make up the American South, followed by Germany and Japan.

In the early 1990s, a reporter from the San Antonio Express-News asked me if the South was the region “poised” to lead the U.S.’s economy. I answered, “Poised? Poised?? We were poised to lead the U.S. economy in the late 1970s, but it goes back much longer than that.”

Few knew it or even know it now (don’t tell that to the millions who migrate to the region). It just took us a while to get rid of our tic of being inferior economically. The tic is now gone from facing somewhat constantly the stereotyping and the innuendo that where we live. Immigrants, refugees, U.S.-based migrating folks and natives alike know this is the place to be, as do major international companies. Those that read about the history of the South in the media and believe it is even remotely the same as decades ago, have apparently not come down here to visit to behold the wonder of a region that is now so worldly.

Does the South have economic challenges? Of course it does, like every U.S. region. But the brain-drain of folks moving to the warmest and less expensive place to live, work and own a business has captured many smart people from other regions of the U.S. and the world. It is the cherished and the darling of all regions in the U.S. for foreign-based companies to locate here in this country. I mean, come on down. We need you.

Michael Randle

In 2016, our cover story was titled “Wages, Riches and Pitchforks.” The story got a lot of attention by the media. In fact, Amazon (without my consent) still sells the piece I wrote as a cheap PDF. (You can read it for free. Just go to https://sb-d.com/magazine/article/wages-riches-pitchforks.)

Here is an excerpt from that article: Not all right-leaning capitalists are against raising the federal minimum wage. Entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, a self-proclaimed plutocrat and founder or financier of over 30 companies, sees a future of angry mobs with pitchforks in this country if something isn’t done about income inequality. Hanauer explains in one of his TED Talks, “While people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 percent of our fellow citizens are falling farther behind.”

Hanauer continued by saying, “You see, the problem isn’t that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it’s getting worse every day. And if wealth, power and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks.”

Hanauer claims there is no evidence to support the theory that if low wage workers earn a little more, unemployment will escalate and the economy will collapse. In his TED Talk, he also claims that Seattle
(his hometown), which voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2017 for some companies, has not seen negative effects from having one of the highest minimum wages in the country. “If trickle-down thinkers were right, then Washington State should have massive unemployment. Seattle should be sliding into the ocean. And yet, Seattle is the fastest-growing big city in the country,” Hanauer maintains.

“So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened.”

“There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. And it will be terrible when they come for everyone, but particularly for people like us plutocrats.”

Given the economic challenges and income inequality, why haven’t unions secured a better foothold in the South?

So, for four decades wage growth has been anemic, we have a stagnant population — an indication that those in their 20s and 30s do not believe they can afford children —
and income inequality where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That being the case, why does organized labor continue to struggle in the 15 Southern states?

Organized union membership is roughly half that in the South compared to the rest of the country, which is around 5 percent of the labor force. There are some states in the South with union rates of 10 percent or more, but that’s rare. 

Twenty-seven states adhere to right-to-work laws; however, every state Southern Business & Development covers is a right-to-work state other than Missouri. A right-to-work law gives workers the freedom to choose whether or not to join a labor union in the workplace. This law also makes it optional for employees in unionized workplaces to pay for union dues or other membership fees required for union representation, whether they are in the union or not.

The law is highly political, with Republicans mostly backing right-to-work legislation in support of big business, and Democrats backing union membership in support of labor and the power of collective bargaining.

While this is not an opinion on right-to-work, there is no question that the South’s efforts to become the engine of the largest economy in the world dilute the influence of labor unions in the region. As entrepreneur Nick Hanauer said earlier in this story, the decline in union membership in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with the decreasing shares of income amongst the 90 percent and increasing income in the top 10 percent. Again, you can make that political all you want, but the numbers indicate that as unions lost their clout, the rich got richer and the poor and middle class lost any leverage they had. 

Now, that does not mean right-to-work is not beneficial to the South’s economy. It is. The South’s GDP now makes it the third largest economy in the world, behind only the U.S. and China. As you know, the South was dirt poor 100 years ago. Without right-to-work laws, there is no way the South could have become the fastest growing U.S. region in the largest economy in the world.

Much of that increase in GDP can be attributed to foreign direct investment. Where does Toyota operate most of its assembly plants and its headquarters in North America? Where does Mercedes-Benz have its only U.S. plant and North American headquarters? Where does BMW have its largest North American plant? By the way, none of those facilities are unionized. The answer is all of those facilities operate in the American South.

But that does not mean unions will not try to organize even foreign plants in the South. They have tried with high-profile union drives at Nissan in Mississippi, Boeing in South Carolina and Volkswagen in Tennessee, just to name a few. Workers, especially at large foreign manufacturing facilities, are extremely lucky to have a job at one of those plants. These facilities already pay way more in wages than the average wage in the South.

Regardless, there is about to be a reckoning when it comes to the South and union activity. In the fall 2021 quarter, Ford, a union company since 1941, announced it is investing $11.4 billion to further its electric vehicle production at a site in Stanton, Tenn., (near Memphis) and Glendale, Ky. Ford will invest $5.6 billion to build batteries and assemble the company’s electric F-Series vehicles in Tennessee. The Kentucky site is a $5.8 billion investment and will include twin battery factories. The two sites will house about 11,000 new jobs.

It will be interesting to see what will happen at those Ford plants when they are up and running. If they unionize, it could change everything in the region. If they don’t, then Ford made an awesome bet.

By Michael Randle

We have arrived at Southern Automotive Corridor 3.0. Phase 1 took us to the ’80s, second phase to the early 2000s. Now with electric cars, we are at 3.0, and it is amazing. Huge deals are flying everywhere in the Southern Auto Corridor.

This summer and fall quarter will be remembered 50 years from now as the most transformative period in the history of automotive manufacturing, not just in the South, but in the Midwest, too — the only two regions in the U.S. that are left with automotive assembly.

Even though Nissan, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz and their plants in the South have spent billions on electric vehicle technology, it really wasn’t until the second half of 2021 that just about everyone got in on the act. The billions spent earlier by some automakers in the South looks like chump change compared to what has been announced recently.

Massive EV-based projects were announced in the South in the second half of 2021. Ford announced projects the size of which we have never seen before. . .for example, automotive “cities” in Hardin County, Ky., and in Stanton, Tenn.

Ford announced its plans in September to create Blue Oval City at the West Memphis I-40 megasite in Stanton, Tenn. The new “city” includes an investment of nearly $6 billion to make electric vehicles, including a next-generation electric Ford F-Series model. Blue Oval City will also include (not counting suppliers) up to 6,000 new jobs. Over $800 million has been earmarked in incentives for Ford in the deal. Earlier in 2021, Ford announced it had increased its planned EV investment to $30 billion by 2025.

Here are some other EV automotive-related projects announced in the South just in the last six months:

• Ford Motor and battery supplier SK Innovation have plans to invest over $5 billion and hire over 5,000 in an electric battery plant at the Glendale Megasite in Hardin County, Ky.,  that will power EV vehicles in the future.
• The Ultium Cells LLC battery plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., is on schedule as of the fall quarter, company officials announced. The 2.8 million-square-foot facility is a joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution.
• Japan’s Nissan Motor Company will spend about $700 million at its two U.S. manufacturing plants in Mississippi and Tennessee to implement new technologies to make electric vehicles.
• Mercedes-Benz is opening an EV battery pack assembly facility on a second Alabama campus in Bibb County.
• Korean automaker Hyundai will begin EV production on the Genesis GV70 EV at its plant in Montgomery, Ala., beginning in 2022.
• Amazon-backed electric truck maker Rivian is expected to announce a
  $5 billion electric truck and SUV factory in East Georgia.
• South Korea’s SKC, a maker of plastic films, is set to invest $473 million to locate a semiconductor parts venture at its existing plant in Georgia. SK also is home to SK Innovation, which has invested $2.6 billion to put an electric-vehicle battery plant in Jackson County and plans to ramp up a second plant on the complex as demand grows.
• Japanese automaker Toyota has chosen the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite for a large electric battery plant to ramp up EV manufacturing in the U.S. The site is a 1,825-acre site rezoned for heavy industry located near the center of the state.
• Tesla will move its headquarters to Austin, Texas, following through on a threat Elon Musk made last year when tensions between the billionaire and California boiled over. Musk announced his decision in October.

There is no data available about the fact that our labor keeps decreasing, and there may not be for a decade or more. In the last three years, About 10,000 people a day on average retired in the U.S. Compare that to a little over 2,000 joining the workforce by turning working age (16), and you can easily see where the labor issues are. People are aging out of the workforce faster than the rate of people entering it.

But the U.S. should not feel like the Lone Ranger. People are aging out of the workplace virtually around the world. In fact, for most countries — especially the U.S. — “job creation” is no longer the most important factor for an economy. Particularly in the South, the region that has seen the toughest time since the Great Depression, job creation has been paramount. But that is no longer the case. Some years, the South creates as many new jobs as the other three regions combined.

We are now entering an era when our politicians stumping for office should literally slow the promotion of job creation and instead figure out how they are going to fill those jobs. There are well over 10 million jobs available in this country as of October and only 8.4 million people looking for work.

Also affecting the labor market in the U.S. — 15 percent of the population was retired in 2010. In 2020, that figure rose to 20 percent.

So, what to do? Millions of economists say, “not much.” The U.S. can increase legal immigration, which could result in reversing the trend, but for how long? Also, increasing legal immigration under President Trump literally gave it a bad name. His last year office, legal immigration — we are talking about working visas — dropped by 85 percent from over 1 million to 200,000.

Then again, a more productive workforce with the aid of automation and AI could help, too.

Alabama

1. Mercedes-Benz (Vance)

2. Honda (Lincoln)

3. Hyundai (Montgomery)

4. Mazda Toyota (Huntsville)

Georgia

5. Kia (West Point)

Kentucky

6. Toyota (Georgetown)

7. Ford (Louisville)

8. Ford Truck (Louisville)

9. GM (Bowling Green)

Mississippi

10. Nissan (Canton)

11. Toyota (Blue Springs)

Missouri

12. Ford (Kansas City)

13. GM (Wentzville)

South Carolina

14. BMW (Greer)

15. Daimler Vans (Ladson)

16. Volvo (Berkeley County)

Tennessee

17. Nissan (Smyrna)

18. Volkswagen (Chattanooga)

19. GM (Spring Hill)

20. Ford (Blue Oval City – Under construction)

Texas

21. GM (Arlington)

22. Toyota (San Antonio)