By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Wade Gottschalk’s goal is to find out what an industry needs, then arrange those puzzle pieces before anyone else.
The result has led industries to construct plants and create jobs here in Wood County.
“We’ve had a pretty successful run,” Gottschalk, executive director of Wood County Economic Development Commission, reported Thursday to the BG Kiwanis Club. And he’s optimistic it will continue.
Gottschalk, who became head of the WCEDC in 2012, said that since 2018 the county’s economy has grown with 8,000 new jobs and $3 billion capital expenditures by industries. In addition to attracting new, the county economic development office works to retain existing companies and help them choose Wood County for expansion.
Some of the biggest projects secured in the county include: CSX Intermodal facility, Home Depot distribution center, Amazon fulfillment center, NSG Glass North America, Northpoint/UPS, the First Solar plants and expansions, and the new data center in the works on Ohio 582 north of Bowling Green. The data center is planned to be a $750 million investment in two buildings on 700 acres.
“We expect a lot more out of that,” he said of the data center. Gottschalk is prevented by a non-disclosure agreement from saying much about that project, but he did say it involves a U.S. company.
Gottschalk explained that the county gets a lot of leads, but many are from industries trying to secure better deals elsewhere.
“Often they’re just someone window shopping,” he said. “Our goal is to be able to do a project faster than anyone else in the country.”
Gottschalk also talked about the national economy – which by most indicators is booming.
Manufacturing has seen a resurgence, unemployment remains low, crude oil production in the U.S. is at a record high, and many production jobs are moving back to America.
The U.S. economy’s rebound from COVID has been faster and more complete than other nations. Retail sales are up 11% from pre-pandemic, and unemployment is very low.
“Businesses still want to hire people,” he said. “The economy has done really well since the pandemic,” he said.
And Wood County is seeing the same healthy recovery signs here, ending 2023 with an unemployment rate of 2.8%.
The problem has now shifted from many jobless people, to too many jobs going unfilled. The issue is not that younger adults, ages 25-54, don’t want to work.
“That’s really not true,” Gottschalk said. But the Baby Boomers have retired from the labor force, leaving fewer Gen Z people to fill their vacancies, he said.
He predicted that will continue for the near future.
“Everybody coming out of high school or college who wants a job is going to be able to get a job,” he said.
Gottschalk presented a series of graphs – all showing positive lines moving upward.
In 2023, the U.S. saw:
- 2.76 million jobs created
- Real GDP growth rate of 2.5%
- Labor force participation rate at 62.5% (63% pre-Covid)
- Consumer Price Index up 3.4% in 2023
- Standard & Poor 500 up 24%
- Unemployment rate at 3.7% at the end of the year
“Currently we’re in the longest streak of being under 4% unemployment since the 1960s,” Gottschalk said.
The U.S. is also seeing a jump in e-commerce that started during the pandemic and never went away. Recent statistics show that 60% of Americans’ retail dollars are being spent on online purchases. That doesn’t count items like new cars that cannot be purchased online – at least for now, Gottschalk said.
That has been a boon for businesses like the Home Depot distribution center and the Amazon fulfillment center in Wood County.
The nation overall is also experiencing a resurgence in manufacturing, Gottschalk said.
Prior to Covid, the spending on new manufacturing buildings and equipment in the U.S. averaged about $60 billion a year.
“We doubled that in about two years,” he said. “We’re bursting at the seams with projects.”
Many U.S. businesses have also worked to “onshore” their production – moving it back to the U.S.
“Covid taught us that global supply chains are much more fragile,” Gottschalk said.
That can be seen in the long waiting times for industries needing transformers.
“It’s not something you can ramp up quickly,” he said. “You can build a building faster than you can get a transformer.”
Also helping the U.S. is the record high production of crude oil in this country.
“We produce more oil everyday than we consume,” meaning the U.S. is no longer energy dependent on other nations, Gottschalk said.
At the same time, the U.S. is experiencing record high production of natural gas – more than the nation consumes.
Near the end of his presentation, Gottschalk posed a question about inflation.
“Has it peaked?” he asked, then added, “if it’s not going up, we’re in a lot of trouble.”
