Lego to hire 500 Chesterfield employees by year’s end

The Lego Group plans to hire approximately 500 people for its $1 billion Chesterfield County manufacturing facility by the end of this year, according to the Danish toymaker’s head of talent operations in the Americas, Karra McCormack.

Lego expects to create more than 1,760 jobs over 10 years. The company and Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced the facility in June 2022.

Lego has filled 15 salaried positions for the Chesterfield facility so far and will open more in the next few months, McCormack said. Lego plans to hire 60 hourly production employees for Chesterfield by June.

At the time of the Chesterfield announcement, Lego CEO Niels B. Christiansen said he thought the average annual salary for employees at the facility would be “north of $60,000.”

Although the company is receiving help with recruiting and onboarding employees through the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a state workforce incentive program, the toymaker is sending its first 60 production workers to its facility in Monterrey, Mexico, this July for trainings, which will include production safety and cultural instruction. The employees will spend two weeks in Mexico, return to the U.S. for two weeks, and then repeat the process in either a four- or six-week period, McCormack said.

“We thought it was super important that they actually see a facility that’s up and running and are able to work on the line alongside [experienced workers],” McCormack said.

After they return from Mexico, the new hires will work in Lego’s temporary facility, a leased building in Chesterfield’s Walthall Interchange Industrial Park. In 2024, workers in the temporary facility will begin packing polybags and boxes of toys.

Construction on Lego’s 1.7 million-square-foot permanent facility in Meadowville Technology Park began in 2022. Lego expects to begin production in the facility in the second half of 2025. The permanent building, which will include a high bay warehouse, will house molding, processing and packing operations.

The solar park that will share the facility’s 340-acre area is set to be complete in 2025 as well. The Chesterfield facility will be carbon-neutral, with the solar park matching all of its energy needs.

Lego plans to ramp up hiring for Chesterfield in 2024 as well, McCormack said.