After the Summit, The Journey Continues

“The United States’ diverse landscapes, vast resources, skilled workforce, and spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship are just a few of the reasons why investors choose to settle here,” said U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in announcing the speaker lineup for this year’s SelectUSA Investment Summit, which took place in early May.

Photo courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Commerce

he hundreds of international investors who planned to attend the annual SelectUSA Investment Summit the first week of May have now returned to their homes. They carry with them new perspectives and knowledge from an array of senior federal officials, governors, policy experts and corporate leaders like themselves who shared their experiences and explored issues and opportunities in inward U.S. foreign direct investment.

Now what?

In addition to its power to convene and facilitate connections with state economic developers and leaders, SelectUSA is also a conduit to data resources that can make for ideal summit follow-up. Among them:

Workforce Data Analysis

Under the aegis of the International Trade Administration, this SelectUSA Stats dashboard compares hourly pay ranges, employment, and workforce concentration for occupations across states, MSAs and regions in the U.S.

For example, a snapshot of data for machinists reveals that the high-population states of California, Illinois and Texas have the most, but Indiana has the highest concentration of them, and within a pay range that tops out more than $3 less per hour than in California.

Looking for welders? Texas tops all states with nearly 51,000, more than 22,000 more than No. 2 California and nearly three times as many as in No. 4 Pennsylvania. The highest concentration of welders, however, is in Wyoming.

A separate tool labeled “Top Areas and Industries by Occupation” displays the top U.S. states/territories and industries by employment and hourly wages for major occupation categories. California, for example, has the most people employed in business and financial operations occupations at more than 1 million — more than 400,000 more than in No. 2 Texas.

FDI Statistics

At trade.gov/selectusa-stats, in addition to workforce data, 14 other categories of actionable data are available on such topics as FDI stock, flow and employment by state in the U.S.; OECD productivity; greenfield investment; and even MSA investment by world region, which shows the number of jobs and the average annual wage of foreign-owned establishments in each U.S. MSA by source market.

A glance at that dashboard reveals that foreign firms employ more than 110.6 million people in the U.S., according to BLS data, at an average annual salary of $49,200. Select Columbus, Ohio, and you learn that average wage is more than $60,000. While European firms employ the most people there (nearly 24,000), Asian firms pay the best, at an average wage of $72,275.

Directories

Bookmark this page to access links and leaders at the chief economic development agencies for all 50 states and U.S. territories: www.trade.gov/selectusa-find-economic-developers. (You’ll find many of these plus an array of regional agencies in the directory found on p. 70 of this issue of Site Selection. And you can learn more about some of the best among them in the Mac Conway Awards citations found on page 58.)

International companies and investors — domestic companies too, for that matter — will find these resources and more in the treasure trove of data found at trade.gov/selectusa.