Job creation should be Job #1
IT SEEMS MOST EVERYONE CAN FEEL IT, TO ONE EXTENT OR
another, and it feels good. After bumping along the bottom for
months, the economy finally appears to be picking up steam,
although perhaps not quite as quickly as we might like.
The last clear and major hurdle to a robust recovery, by many
accounts, is the lingering problem of jobless Americans. For nearly
two years, the national unemployment rate has been stuck at 9 percent or above. Although the rate now appears to be trending down, it
seems clear that anything government and business can do to boost
job creation will help stoke the engines of economic growth.
That’s why two announcements that crossed our
desk recently came as welcome news, while another,
alas, was troubling.
First, the welcome news. In late January,
Associated Solutions, an Addison, Ill.-based company that provides material handling equipment
and integrated supply chain solutions, announced
plans to boost its work force by 12 percent. The hiring follows the 50-year-old firm’s decision last year
to expand into engineered logistics and material
handling solutions, offering services like analyzing
customers’ logistics operations for opportunities to
enhance effectiveness and reduce overall costs.
Associated says it will be hiring for positions at
every level of the company, from service and sales
personnel to senior management.
Just a few days later, we heard about a DC being built in Star, N.C.,
by Frontier Logistics, a Texas-based logistics service provider that
serves the plastics industry. The new DC represents a $55 million
investment on Frontier Logistics’ part and is expected to add 71 jobs
to the local economy. Even better, the projected average salary for
workers at the site is $47,477. That’s 70 percent higher than the average income in the region, which, according to state reports, is just
$28,028.
While this was great news from two great companies with great
leadership and great teams, it was tempered by an announcement we
received a week later—one that spoke to the need for governments to
set priorities if they’re serious about driving job growth.
Citing what it called an “unfavorable regulatory climate” in the state
of Texas, online retail giant Amazon announced that it will shutter a
distribution facility outside Dallas. The closure came in response to
the state’s insistence that Amazon pay $269 million in sales taxes for
merchandise orders fulfilled through the Dallas
facility—a bill that Amazon has appealed. It is
unclear how many jobs this will cost the Lone
Star State, but any lost job in the current envi-
ronment is one too many, especially when it’s the
direct result of government policies.
