Several Midwest manufacturing towns are seeing their first significant new plant investment in years, though the gains remain concentrated in counties that offered the largest tax incentive packages.
Local officials describe the new investment as a meaningful but partial recovery from decades of plant closures that hollowed out the regional manufacturing base.
“We’re not back to where we were in the nineties, but we’re finally moving in the right direction,” one county economic development director said.
Labour economists note that many of the new positions require different technical skills than the jobs they are replacing, raising questions about retraining programs for displaced workers.
