Jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s what every community wants and the good news according to the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance (GCEDA) is that Guilford County is bringing those jobs in.

GCEDA) – a group engaged in a countywide collaborative effort to bring more business and industry to Guilford County – was almost giddy at its Thursday, Nov. 29 meeting, since nearly all the news it was reporting was positive. According to the reports at the GCEDA meeting the local economy is hitting on all cylinders – and a big part of that was an influx of new jobs in 2018.

At the morning meeting held at the Cameron Campus of Guilford Technical Community College in Colfax, Loren Hill, the president of the High Point Economic Development Corp., reported that jobs were now streaming into the county.

“It’s been an impressive quarter of projects,” he said of all the new business, adding that the growth spanned the gamut from manufacturing to distribution centers to health care companies as well as those providing specialized business services.

“We counted up all the jobs that were created or announced over the last year here in Guilford County and the total is 5,167 jobs,” he said. “And that’s the ones we know about – other companies have added jobs as well.”

Hill said some of the jobs weren’t here yet – such as those that would be coming from a new Publix Super Markets Inc. distribution center in Greensboro, but they are on the way. Hill said Publix was the biggest project of 2018.

On the negative side, he said, it looks like about 450 jobs will be lost in Guilford County in 2018, but overall the county is still doing very well when it comes to job creation.

“So, all in all, it’s been a pretty good year,” Hill told the group.

GCEDA is engaged in several initiatives to keep those jobs coming to the county. It is working with marketing consultants to promote Guilford County through a new “You Can Make It Here” publicity campaign, as well as another effort to keep the county constantly on the radar of prospects by getting the county mentioned in business publications.

At the meeting, Greensboro Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Brent Christensen said GCEDA was working with a New York consulting firm to assure those media mentions.

“We feed them these stories all the time,” he said.

Recently, Hanesbrands Inc. announced that it’s opening a 340,000-square-foot distribution center in High Point to support and distribute its Champion brand of products. Christensen said word of that was making it through the site selection consultants through magazines and websites they read.

“We got three media mentions in Logistics Management, Modern Materials Handling and Supply Chain Management Review.

Christensen acknowledged that those publications weren’t on everyone’s reading list.

“But they’re on the reading list of people who we want to see them,” he said.

Christensen said the marketing firm was continuing to feed success stories from Guilford County to a national and international audience of business leaders.

 

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