The U.S. Army has awarded Raytheon a $676 million contract to continue manufacturing the TOW weapon system, which provides heavy anti-tank guided missile capability,RTX, the Arlington County parent company of Raytheon, a defense contractor, announced Wednesday.
Two separate awards consist of a $430 million contract for FY 2023 and an additional $246 million contract for 2024. Work for the awards will take place in Tucson, Arizona.
Raytheon has delivered more than 700,000 of these weapon systems — which include the TOW 2A, TOW 2B and TOW Bunker Buster missiles — to U.S. and international armed forces, according to a news release, which also noted the U.S. Department of Defense has provided Ukraine with approximately 13,000 TOW missiles. The TOW weapon system will be in service with the U.S. and allied forces beyond 2050, according to RTX.
Recent upgrades to TOW’s design includes updated fuzing and target detection. TOW weapon systems are compatible with manned and unmanned vehicles, including the U.S. Army High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, the Stryker Anti-Tank Guided Missile Vehicles and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
“Our TOW production line is active, and we can manufacture up to 10,000 missiles annually,” Tom Laliberty, president of land and air defense systems at Raytheon, stated in the release. “This combat-proven effector is ready to meet current and future anti-tank guided missile requirements for the U.S. Army, Marines Corps and land forces across the globe.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Raytheon has agreed to pay more than $950 million to resolve multiple allegations that include fraud and bribing a Qatari official.
With more than 185,000 employees globally, RTX reported $68.9 billion in sales in 2023.
Huntington Ingalls Industries’ McLean-based Mission Technologies division won a $3 billion contract to provide the Department of Defense logistics and intelligence support and technology.
Under the Logistics Services, ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] Operations and Next-Gen Technology (LOGIX) task order, the HII division will provide strategy-level support to the DOD and its mission partners. HII announced the award, which supports the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) strategy, on Wednesday.
Todd Gentry, president of Mission Technologies’ All-Domain Operations group, said in a statement: “LOGIX positions our team to expand our support to mission partners globally, partnering with DOD to provide worldclass intelligence, integrated logistics, and emerging technologies and solutions to enhance and inform our mission partners’ decision space in a multi-domain contested environment. We’re honored to have been selected and are ready to execute.”
Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries is the nation’s largest military shipbuilder and the largest industrial employer in Virginia. The Fortune 500 company employs more than 44,000 workers. The Mission Technologies division has more than 7,000 employees and more than 100 facilities globally.
Also on Wednesday, HII reported its third quarter earnings. The shipbuilder’s revenue was $2.7 billion, down 2.4% from the third quarter of 2023. Lower volume at Mississippi-based Ingalls Shipbuilding and Newport News Shipbuilding drove the decrease, but Mission Technologies’ growth partially offset it, according to HII.
HII also lowered its fiscal 2024 shipbuilding revenue expectations — from a range of $8.8 billion to $9.1 billion down to approximately $8.8 billion — because of uncertainty about the timing of a Navy contract on Virginia-class Block V and Block VI and Columbia-class submarines, supply chain delays and a less experienced workforce. The company increased its expected revenue from the Mission Technologies division, though, from a range of $2.75 billion to $2.8 billion to a range of $2.8 billion to $2.85 billion.
The Hard Rock entertainment, gaming, and hospitality brand is solidifying its place in Bristol on Nov. 14 with the formal opening of its Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol, a $515 million resort and casino.
The company has had a presence in the city for the last two years via a temporary casino facility, but the launch of more permanent facilities will mean the opening of the hotel, along with other amenities.
The facility — it spans more than 622,000 square feet — includes a 303-room hotel, multiple bars and restaurants, over 20,000 square feet of event space, a spa, a resort pool, an outdoor live music stage, and a pastry kitchen.
Hard Rock will bring its flair of music-related stylings to the resort, with an extensive memorabilia collection that focuses on country and western music genres. The Nov. 14 grand opening also will feature a concert by country music star and “The Voice” coach Blake Shelton.
Located at the former Bristol Mall, the casino is proving to be an economic driver for the city. Since July 2022, when the temporary casino opened, Hard Rock has paid more than $66 million in gaming taxes to the state and welcomed more than 3 million visitors.
“When we open, we’ll open with over 1,400 [employees],” says Hassan Abdel-Moneim, director of hotel operations for Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol. “Our minimum wage in the casino is $18 an hour. This is really going to help spur growth and development in the area and provide people a standard of living that they don’t currently have.”
Northern Virginia
In Alexandria, what was once the George Mason Hotel in the 1920s reopened as Hotel Heron in June. The 134-room boutique hotel is part of Aparium Hotel Group and comes with more than 3,500 square feet of indoor event space and a rooftop bar overlooking the Potomac River.
The state is expected to get its first JW Marriott hotel in mid-2025. The JW Marriott at Reston Station will be a 243-room hotel that rests below 94 condominiums. Managed by Crescent Hotels & Resorts, the hotel will contain 25,000 square feet of event space and be part of The Row at Reston Station.
Also coming to the Reston area at the end of the year is a hotel that’s a combination of two brands under the Marriott umbrella. The upcoming AC Hotel by Marriott/Residence Inn by Marriott Reston will consist of 147 guest rooms under the AC brand and 120 under Residence Inn. It will have approximately 11,000 square feet of event space and a rooftop lounge with a mountain view; both the AC half and the Residence Inn part are set to open in January 2025.
In July, The Publisher Hotel in Fredericksburg opened as part of Marriott’s Tribute Portfolio. The 98-room hotel stands where The Free Lance-Star newspaper’s former office was in downtown Fredericksburg, and includes 1,800 square feet of event space.
Central Virginia
The University of Virginia’s Virginia Guesthouse will be a hotel and conference center with 214 guest rooms, 29,000 square feet of meeting space and approximately 12,000 square feet of public space. It is expected to open in fall 2025 near the new School of Data Science in the Ivy Corridor.
Shenandoah Mansions, a 73-room hotel located in a building dating back more than a century in Richmond‘s Fan District, is expected to open in February 2025. The fifth hotel from national hotelier Ash, the motifs of its rooms will pay homage to American folk art.
Southern Virginia
Located in Danville, the $750 million Caesars Virginia Casino and Resort, replacing the temporary casino, is expected to open by December, Danville officials say. The hotel is set to have 320 rooms, along with a 90,000-square-foot casino floor, a full-service spa and 12 restaurants and bars. It is slated to contain 50,000 square feet of meeting and convention space.
At the moment, new lodgings in Norfolk and Virginia Beach are mainly in the discussion stage. In April, Norfolk’s mayor announced the city’s MacArthur Center mall would be replaced with a mixed-use development that could include a 400-room, military-themed hotel known as The Anchorage.
Meanwhile, Divaris Real Estate Chair-man and CEO Gerald Divaris and former Gov. Robert McDonnell have proposed a 450-room hotel on 17th Street in Virginia Beach, according to city officials.
No studies have found a higher prevalence of clairvoyance among labor market experts than in the average population.
Since they can’t see the future, these professionals sift through data and surveys to figure out what the coming months may hold. Some reading these tea leaves have predicted employers may soon be suffering through another wave of workers turning in their notices — the Great Resignation 2.0.
“People get very uneasy, and so they stay put. But the minute things shift, that’s when you start seeing people get really assertive, both in hiring and in their job search,” Shannon Gabriel, vice president of the leadership solutions practice at North Carolina-based TBM Consulting, told newsletter HR Brew in September.
The original Great Resignation — the term was coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor at University College London’s School of Management — was the mostly COVID-era period from March 2021 to June 2023 when a record number of workers quit their jobs. In 2022 alone, more than 50 million workers told their bosses “Adios!”
After the pandemic, experts have speculated, many workers were no longer willing to let their 9-to-5s take center stage. People started “recalibrating the way that they wanted to live their lives and how work was going to fit into it,” says Elizabeth Powell, an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s business and nursing schools.
While some industries shed jobs during the pandemic, others grew, creating opportunities for those looking for greener pastures.
“A lot of people were jumping ship to new companies because the pay was higher, because the benefits were better, because they could work remotely, all of these different things,” explains Sarah Wittman, assistant professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business.
Laura Bowser, managing director and human capital consulting practice leader at Fahrenheit Advisors, started working at the Richmond consulting firm in 2022, just in time to fully experience the O.G. Great Resignation. “It was wild,” she recalls. “People couldn’t keep any of their HR teams because HR folks were burning out left and right.”
That period was followed by the Big Stay, a phrase Nela Richardson, chief economist for New Jersey’s ADP Research, came up with to describe the slowdown in worker turnover immediately following the Great Resignation.
“The economy wasn’t doing as well, inflation was up,” explains Wittman. “And so, in times like that, especially with economic uncertainty, you know, mortgage rates being so high, you don’t just ditch out on a job. You tend to hunker down and stay.”
Which brings us back to the here and now, with labor experts murmuring about possible coming changes to the employment market.
Calling it quits
In August, the U.S. quits rate, the number of workers who voluntarily left their jobs during the entire month as a percent of employment, was 1.9%, the lowest rate since 2020. About 3.1 million Americans told employers to take this job and shove it in August, but that was 159,000 fewer resignations than in July.
Virginia’s quit rate for July, the latest available number as of press time, was 2.5%, higher than the 2.1% national rate that month. An estimated 105,000 workers exited jobs from Virginia employers that month, about 23,000 more than quit in June.
Neither the national nor the state quits rates make a convincing argument for a second Great Resignation on the horizon, according to John Provo, executive director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Economic & Community Engagement.
However, Provo points to the fifth annual PwC Global Workforce Hopes & Fears Survey. Released in June, it’s a vibe check of 56,000 workers polled across 50 countries and regions. Some 28% of respondents reported they would be “very or extremely likely” to switch employers over the next 12 months. During the Great Resignation in 2022, only 19% of workers surveyed gave a similar answer.
“What does it all mean?” Provo asks. “I don’t know that we know, but I definitely think it’s a thing to watch.”
In an August speech, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted declining job vacancies and that hiring and quits rates have fallen below pre-pandemic levels seen in 2018 and 2019. “We do not seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions,” he said.
Prompted partially by a desire to stabilize a cooling job market, the Fed in September lowered interest rates by a half percentage point — marking its first cut since 2020.
Lowering borrowing costs could prompt companies to hire workers, experts say. The rate cut could also give employees confidence in the economy, which might provide them with a jolt of courage to seek out new jobs.
“[Consumer] prices are still going up, but not nearly by as much as before,” Wittman says. “Then we have the rate cut, and so people might have a little bit of hope on the horizon.”
Wait and see?
Employees who quit during the Great Resignation have been at their current jobs for about two years now, Wittman notes, and could be getting antsy. “That’s a long time here in the U.S.,” she says.
Restless though they may be, employees could be waiting, experts speculate, to see how November’s presidential election shakes out before launching a job search.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen there,” Wittman says, “or what sort of economic conditions will follow.”
Executives also seem to be following the Harris-Trump race closely.
A quarterly survey of chief financial officers by Duke University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, most recently released in September, found 30% of CFOs reporting that their companies are postponing, scaling down or canceling investment plans due to uncertainty around the election.
Another factor to consider: Some industries, like tech and legal, are undergoing a period of rightsizing after going on hiring sprees during and immediately after the pandemic.
“So, independent of who’s going to be occupying the White House, there are some market adjustments that will happen,” says Violet Ho, professor at the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business.
Employers added 254,000 jobs in September, higher than the 140,000 jobs predicted by forecasters. That news comes on the heels of the unemployment rate dropping from 4.2% to 4.1% in September.
The higher-than-expected number of new jobs added, along with revised July and August numbers that showed the U.S. economy added 72,000 more jobs than previously reported, suggest “the labor market remains strong,” Provo argues.
And if the unemployment rate continues to decrease, Ho says, voluntary resignations could increase. “In part, this is because employees have more job opportunities to pursue and also may feel that they’ll have more negotiating power over employers,” she says.
Even so, economist Bob McNab, chair of Old Dominion University’s Department of Economics and director of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, remains skeptical that it will result in another Great Resignation.
“Even though we saw [September] job numbers … that were much stronger than expected, and even though job openings remain higher than pre-pandemic levels in Virginia and the United States,” McNab says, “workers are looking at the [overall] environment — inflation is decelerating, yes, but there’s an uncertain presidential election. There’s an uncertain global political environment. We just went through the uncertainty of a port strike. What do people do when they’re uncertain about the future? They’re less likely to quit their jobs.”
And businesses are taking much the same wait-and-see strategy.As an October Axios article noted, “Companies are hesitant to shrink or grow their payrolls for fear that they might be caught flatfooted if the economy revs up or unexpectedly slows down.”
Just as a combination of rare meteorological factors are required to create a perfect storm, a whole host of unusual variables would be needed to kick off a new wave of employees leaving their jobs.
After all, the Great Resignation was a reaction to the pandemic, which Ho calls a “huge environmental jolt.” And “in this case,” she says, “I’m not seeing any environmental jolt of that size. Even if there were to be some labor movements, I don’t think it will be as huge and as impactful.”
Ch-ch-changes
Another school of thought is that the Great Resignation wasn’t a one-off phenomenon, but the first glimpse of a workforce forever changed by the pandemic. “I’ve been thinking that it’s going to be more like just an ongoing recalibration that folks are going through with regard to how they want to spend their time — in their work, in their lives,” says U.Va.’s Elizabeth Powell.
It’s also possible that the workforce could be undergoing a generational evolution as boomers retire and Gen Z joins millennials and Gen Xers at the office.
With older generations, Wittman says, “there was much more anchoring within social structure. You had the pull of the family, you had the pull of community organizations, religious organizations. So many of these things for the normal American are just not there [now].”
A worker without additional anchor points, Wittman adds, will have a harder time accepting a difficult supervisor than the person who comes to work for a paycheck and finds greater fulfillment coaching Little League.
“When you have only the workplace that’s giving you fulfillment, or not, it’s more challenging, because then [work] absolutely needs to fit who you are in order for you to feel self-realized.”
Powell, who also directs U.Va.’s Compassionate Care Initiative, an effort that includes cultivating a resilient and caring health care workforce, shares the belief that younger workers might be willing to tolerate less at the office.
“So, boomers like myself might be motivated to work out of duty and a sense of obligation to the organization,” she says, while “younger workers now are looking for not only competitive pay, but also growth opportunities and meaning and purpose in their work.”
CEOs who dismiss Gen Z as being too demanding or delicate for work do so at their peril.
“You’re going to have to get over it,” Powell says, “or you’re not going to get anybody to work for you.”
It’s cheaper to retain an employee than to hire a new one, Powell cautions.
Company leaders, she suggests, would be wise not to wait to take action until it’s too late. “Employers could make certain choices now that might maybe hedge against a Great Resignation,” she says.
To retain workers during the first Great Resignation, Bowser points out, employers increased pay and bonuses and, in general, worked harder at making employees happy. “What I’ve noticed is a lot of employers have kind of eased back into older habits,” she says. “I’m not seeing as many spot bonuses anymore. I’m not hearing of employers throwing money [at workers] as hard as they used to.”
But company leaders should invest in compensation so workers don’t put in two years and then jump to a competitor for a pay raise, Bowser says. She recommends that executives perform a compensation analysis every year to ensure wages are competitive. “Just pay and keep folks,” she says.
Over the past two years, The Branch Group, an employee-owned, heavy-highway construction and building contractor headquartered in Roanoke, has studied pay and benefits with an eye toward retention, says Tina Pfalzgraf, the company’s chief human resources officer. Branch added fertility insurance coverage for employees as well as a more generous leave policy, along with voluntary benefits like identity theft protection and pet insurance.
“We’ve been incrementally doing the things that we think matter most to our people so that they choose us as their employer of choice,” she says.
Many modern workers want a career lattice with options for job-life flexibility instead of a career ladder, says Natalie Sigmon, Blue Eagle Credit Union’s director of talent recruitment and retention. Photo by Natalee Waters
Natalie Sigmon, director of talent recruitment and retention for Roanoke’s Blue Eagle Credit Union and president of the Roanoke Valley Society for Human Resource Management, says that when she interviews prospective employees, she hears about how they’re looking for a role offering “growth and development.”
That doesn’t mean everyone wants to be the boss, though. “I’m definitely seeing that people don’t necessarily want that responsibility,” says Sigmon, who stresses the idea of a career lattice, instead of a ladder. With a lattice, employees can make lateral moves to other departments or even take a role with less responsibility if that’s a better fit for their lives.
Companies, Sigmon says, could consider developing a healthy budget to support training needs to allow for this kind of movement. “Certainly, people want to learn more,” she says.
Another simple way to boost employee retention is to make sure workers understand the value of their total compensation.
Branch does that by offering trainings on what it means to be part of an employee-owned company. Blue Eagle Credit Union hands out tip sheets illustrating how much the organization spends on benefits, trainings and additional programs.
“There’s the number that you think you see on your W2 or on your paycheck, but here’s what it really encompasses,” Sigmon explains.
As far as what not to do, U.Va.’s Powell warns against investing money and energy into trendy wellness programs. Those, she says, don’t do much to foster the kind of healthy work cultures that retain employees as the things that really matter.
“It’s not my access to going to yoga at lunchtime,” she says. “It’s, is there skilled communication? Is there true collaboration at work, or is there effective decision-making or is staffing adequate? Is there meaningful recognition? Are my leaders mindful and authentic people?”
For decades, the promise of economic revitalization has tantalized Southwest Virginia. The sparsely populated region, once home to booming coal mining and tobacco industries, has had money and resources thrown at it by local, state and federal governments, but it’s still had a difficult time finding its footing.
As the region’s economy has declined, so too has its population, with the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service predicting Southwest Virginia’s headcount will have dropped by more than 10% between 2020 and 2030 and will decline more than 23% by 2050. What’s more, just over half of Southwest Virginians participate in the labor force — about 12% lower than the state average, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. That’s due to a variety of factors, including child care, transportation, housing and the opioids epidemic.
And that’s in normal times — not taking into account the impact from disasters such as Hurricane Helene, which damaged or destroyed more than 500 homes and 80 businesses across the region in September and shut down a l.5-mile segment of U.S. Route 58, a key regional artery for commerce and travel that stretches from far Southwest Virginia to Hampton Roads. The Virginia Cooperative Extension has estimated that agricultural damage in the region could surpass $125 million.
Despite Southwest Virginia’s challenges, billions of public dollars have been invested regionally during the past several years, including $3.8 billion in planned Interstate 81 improvements, $8.2 million in affordable housing support, and $1.48 billion in federal funds to expand broadband access. And that’s not to mention Highlands Community Services’ new mental health crisis center, which opened in Abingdon in May, or Emory & Henry University’s new state lab school, SWVA HEALS (Southwest Virginia Healthcare Excellence Academy Lab School), which launched in August and prepares regional high school students for careers in health care.
Plus, considering the region’s historic connection to the energy industry and its ample supply of vacant land, economic development officials have been marketing Southwest’s abandoned coal mining lands for renewable energy and data center projects. While industries like those could provide investments in jobs and capital the region needs, the situation won’t change overnight, experts caution.
“We hear all the time, ‘Oh, you guys have all this land. You can do solar everywhere. You can do projects everywhere,’” says Will Payne, director of InvestSWVA and managing partner of regional economic development consulting firm Coalfield Strategies. “And … if that was true, where are the projects right now?”
Payne is heavily plugged into Southwest Virginia politics and his work is focused on marketing the region for economic development projects.
Fighting against time
Completely revitalizing a region’s economy takes time. Energy projects are complex and can take years to get off the ground, considering the due diligence involved.
“There are no quick wins in energy generation projects,” Payne says. “There are no quick wins in data center projects.”
Even developing a solar farm can take four years to complete, and that’s “probably really aggressive,” says Will Clear, managing partner of Bristol-based consultancy Virginia Energy Strategies and a former chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Energy.
Clear and Payne are advisers for Energy DELTA Lab, a regional nonprofit collaborative initiative to market more than 65,000 acres of previously mined land in the region to develop into renewable energy projects, such as solar, wind or hydrogen, and data centers. Partners in the initiative include energy companies, InvestSWVA, the Southwest Virginia Energy Research and Development Authority, and the Virginia Department of Energy.
“The idea of using mine lands — it makes a lot of sense … using brownfield sites, but the real issue is not that simple,” Clear says. “There’s a lot of complexities associated with land that has been previously mined and currently mined [and] potentially under permit. There’s a lot of things you have to tackle.”
In November 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced an agreement between Wise County, the Energy DELTA Lab and Dallas-based Fortune 100 energy company Energy Transfer to aid in developing a variety of energy projects that would attract private investment and fit Youngkin’s all-of-the-above strategy for fulfilling the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s renewable power mandates.
Youngkin also announced a new initiative this year, Accelerate Southwest. Aimed at improving the region’s economic development, infrastructure, housing and cost of living, the initiative focuses on existing programs like improvements to I-81 and the DELTA Lab.
On the economic development front, although it requires a great deal of time and investment to bring data centers and renewable energy projects to fruition, next year could be a turning point for such developments in the region, Clear and Payne say.
“I think that in 2025, it’d be fair to say that we’re going to see real movement here based on a lot of due diligence that’s been going on for the last three years,” Payne says.
Data center storage rack manufacturer Tate is investing $15 million in a new manufacturing facility in St. Paul, with plans to add 170 jobs over four years, says Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority‘s Jonathan Belcher. Photo by Tim Cox
From mining to manufacturing
Energy and data center projects are eyed as key remedies for the economically ailing region, which has seen its coal production fall off dramatically during the past three decades. The region’s coal production, which occurs mostly in Buchanan, Dickenson and Wise counties, fell from 46.6 million tons in 1990 to fewer than 10 million tons in 2020, according to the Virginia Department of Energy.
“Coal’s not dying. We’re producing more coal than we’ve ever produced. It’s just with fewer people,” Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, said during the Southwest Virginia Economic Forum at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise in May.
“If you look back at that 20-year period, there were definitely highs and lows for that industry, [but] it’s continued to be a significant part of the economy,” says Randall Rose, associate vice chancellor for community and economic development at U.Va. Wise. “However, there also has been a very strategic effort looking at diversifying the region so that if there is a decline in the coal industry, it doesn’t make such a major impact on the economy and the lives of individuals.”
At U.Va. Wise, Rose is responsible for fostering the symbiotic relationship between the university’s pool of student talent and the region’s employers, as well as assisting in larger economic development and entrepreneurship-focused goals for the region.
U.Va. Wise is also part of Opportunity Southwest, a regional collaborative initiative for promoting entrepreneurship. It was formed in 2012 to create the Blueprint for Entrepreneurial Growth & Economic Prosperity in Southwest Virginia, a strategic planning document for developing a regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“That blueprint really set the stage for not only local economic developers and small business developers, but also regional and statewide and even federal partners to see what that future could look like and where the areas of focus would be for the Southwest region,” Rose explains.
Additionally, U.Va. Wise has been working with localities and economic development officials to research the feasibility of renewable energy and data center projects at specific sites in the region.
“We want to support in any way possible the economic developers in the region [and] the private sector,” Rose says.
Another focus of economic development efforts in Southwest Virginia has been manufacturing.
“A lot of that goes back to the blue-collar heritage of the region with the coal mining history. That workforce adapts very well to manufacturing positions, so we focus very heavily on that,” says Jonathan S. Belcher, executive director and general counsel for the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority (VCEDA). Established by the General Assembly in 1988 to enhance and diversify Southwest Virginia’s economy, VCEDA works closely with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and local economic development officials to secure new projects for the region.
Most of the manufacturing companies VCEDA seeks to recruit are advanced manufacturers using specialized equipment that requires specific training and experience. “They’re not just basic assembly positions or something that would be a lower skill level or lower-paying position,” Belcher says.
One such project was announced in November 2023, when data center storage rack manufacturer Tate announced it would establish a new 270,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in St. Paul, along the Russell and Wise counties border. The nearly $15 million project is expected to create 170 full-time jobs over the next four years, Belcher says.
The region’s manufacturing industry has started paying off — literally. Since early 2022, average annual wages in Southwest Virginia have been growing at a higher rate than the rest of the commonwealth, according to data from Chmura Economics & Analytics.
Growing tourism, small business
While Southwest Virginia continues to struggle with challenges such as its low workforce participation rate and obstacles to economic development, the region still attracts tourists to its large swaths of unspoiled, natural beauty. For that reason, tourism has continued to grow in Southwest Virginia during the past couple of decades, Belcher says. Much of the tourism in the region is centered on outdoor recreation such as hiking, ATVs and horseback riding — but it’s also home to The Crooked Road Heritage Music Trail. The scenic, 330-mile driving route connects a variety of music venues and festivals including the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol and the Floyd Country Store, which features live Appalachian music and a weekly Friday Night Jamboree.
“There’s also a lot of historical attractions in the area going back to the Colonial time period,” Belcher says. And much of Southwest’s tourism development has been “building upon those assets … building small businesses that support that.” As a result, more colleges in the area have also started to implement hospitality management and outdoor recreation management programs.
Some of these small businesses and economic stimulation comes from Airbnbs, campgrounds, restaurants and food trucks, he says. Many restaurants, coffee shops and other small retailers have emerged from seed capital programming and regional Small Business Development Centers. One such small business that’s found success is a drone photography business run by Dickenson County native Brad Deel. He received a $10,000 grant from VCEDA, and now his photography is used to market the region and promote tourism.
“We really feel like small business development is a key part of the economic development strategy as well,” Belcher says. “Relying just on larger industrial recruitment projects is a really misplaced strategy to rely solely on. The activity [we’re seeing is] really helping with the stability of the economy.”
Southwest Virginia at a glance
Known for its rural, mountainous landscapes and as the birthplace of American country and bluegrass music, Southwest Virginia includes Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington and Wythe counties, as well as the cities of Bristol, Galax and Norton. Formerly known mostly for coal mining, the region is turning its efforts toward attracting ecotourism, alternative energy projects and data centers. The University ofVirginia’s College at Wise, Emory & Henry University and Mountain Empire, Wytheville and Southwest Virginia community colleges are also located in the region.
Population
335,847
Top employers
Walmart
CGI
Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell and Wise county school systems
Tempur-Sealy
Coronado Coal
Notable hotels
The Bristol Hotel (Bristol) 65 rooms, 3,800 square feet of event space
The Inn at Wise (Wise) 49 rooms, 5,000 square feet of event space
The Martha Washington Inn
& Spa (Abingdon) 63 rooms, 3,200 square feet of event space
The Primland Resort (Meadows of Dan) 53 rooms, 12,149 square feet of event space
The Sessions Hotel (Bristol) 70 rooms, 2,311 square feet of event space
Western Front Hotel (St. Paul) 30 rooms, 2,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space
One of the premier attractions of Southwest Virginia is the Appalachian Trail, which runs through 14 states and through the heart of the region. SWVA is also home to the 300-mile gospel, blues and bluegrass music heritage trail The Crooked Road and Bristol’s Birthplace of Country Music Museum. In Damascus, up to 20,000 people attend the Appalachian Trail Days Festival each year. On Nov. 14, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol is set to host a grand opening of its $515 million permanent facility, including the Hard Rock Live entertainment venue. For live stage performances, visit The Barter Theatre in Abingdon, the nation’s longest-running Actors’ Equity theater.
In the wake of the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates by half a percentage point in September, the stock market has been setting records, hiring numbers are trending strong, and the inflation rate has been slowly edging downward.
Nevertheless, many businesses — and workers — seem to be in a state of anxious uncertainty, awaiting the outcome of this fall’s tight, bitterly waged presidential election, as well as any signals that may give them a better insight into the economic outlook for 2025.
As Virginia Business Associate Editor Beth JoJack examines in her November cover story, Vibe check, companies are also trying to get a read on whether their employees might be watching for the right time to jump ship — a prospect that for many employers sets off traumatic flashbacks of the pandemic’s Great Resignation era and its attendant labor crunches.
You’d do well to keep this question on your radar. After all, in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2024 Global Workforce Hopes & Fears Survey, released in June, 28% of employees surveyed responded that they would be “very or extremely likely” to switch employers over the next 12 months. That may not sound like a lot — until you hear that during the height of the Great Resignation, just 19% of workers surveyed gave a similar answer.
So, it was a tad surprising that Amazon.com chose this moment to hurl a metaphorical bomb into the labor pool’s presently murky waters.
In mid-September, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo directing all corporate staff to return to the office five days a week as of Jan. 2, effectively eliminating all options for hybrid work schedules “outside of extenuating circumstances.” The global e-tail Goliath, which has its East Coast headquarters, Amazon HQ2, in Arlington County, previously required employees to work at least three days a week in the office.
Jassy, who said he is also seeking to streamline bureaucracy and flatten management structures, noted that prior to the pandemic, people didn’t have expectations of working remote or hybrid schedules. And he said that he wanted Amazon, which had about 415,000 corporate employees as of 2022, to function like a startup, fostering “fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, [and] deeply connected collaboration.”
Needless to say, a lot of experts have been weighing in with thoughts on this move. Some analysts, perhaps cynically, have wondered if it isn’t an effort by Amazon to cut staffing without having to instigate layoffs. There will, after all, inevitably be employees who choose to quit because of this RTO mandate. One question is, how many? Will it kick off a wave of “rage applications” to other jobs? And will Amazon lose an edge in attracting and retaining in-demand talent, particularly in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence? Competitors like Google, Meta and OpenAI still offer hybrid work, and Microsoft execs have said they have no plans for strict RTO policies unless productivity falls off.
To be fair, Amazon isn’t the only big company taking a harder stance on return to office. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been critical of how remote work has created office building vacancies and has told Fortune that remote work harms “spontaneous idea generation” and is bad for team management. And in KPMG’s 2024 CEO Outlook survey, released in September, almost 80% of the 1,300 CEOs polled worldwide said they thought hybrid workers would return to full-time office schedules by 2027.
But even so, would eliminating remote and hybrid work be good for workers and productivity, or a step backward?
In September, PwC released its Workforce Radar Report, a 13-month study that surveyed more than 20,000 chief executives, HR professionals and employees. Its findings? “Hybrid workers have higher degrees of satisfaction and productivity than fully on-site [workers],” a PWC partner and workforce transformation leader, Anthony Abbatiello, summarized to Business Insider in September.
Quoting the PwC report, “The idea that being on-site all day every day is necessary to establish and sustain a strong culture is a myth. Don’t be afraid to offer flexible options for fear of diminishing it.”
Margaret Abrams was studying engineering at Liberty University when she came across an online job advertisement from Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries.
HII, Virginia’s largest industrial employer, was offering a $2,500 signing bonus to job candidates who successfully completed a 16-week computer numerical control training at the Navy’s Advanced Training in Defense Manufacturing pilot program, managed by the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville.
After three semesters at Liberty, Abrams wasn’t satisfied with school and was eager to get to work. Working with her hands was appealing to her, and she knew she wanted a career, not just a job.
Now, Abrams, 21, has found that. After graduating in June from the ATDM program, she immediately went to work for HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division.
“We are directly working on parts for a ship,” she says. “You can look out in the dry docks and go, ‘Oh, that’s what I’m working on,’ kind of having that constant reminder.”
Abrams, who hails from Portsmouth, is one of more than 800 people who have graduated from ATDM since the program, a public-private partnership between IALR, Danville Community College, the Navy, the Department of Defense and industry stakeholders, began in 2021.
About 170 of those graduates have stayed in Virginia, according to Jason Wells, IALR’s executive vice president for manufacturing advancement.
“We continue each year to scale-up and to ramp up, and it’s been a tremendous lift,” Wells says.
That scale-up is coming at a crucial time in Virginia. Employees like Abrams are helping fill huge gaps in maritime manufacturing jobs, which includes Navy shipbuilding and repair as well as the state’s nascent offshore wind industry.
Hampton Roads Workforce Council President and CEO Shawn Avery projects 40,000 skilled workers will be needed regionally during the next six years to support the needs of the maritime and offshore wind industries, the skills for which, including welding, CNC machining and pipefitting, overlap by about 90%. The council is helping to lead recruitment and training efforts to meet the pressing regional workforce needs.
“We’ve got to put a really big, concerted effort on filling those jobs and developing that pipeline,” Avery says.
And work is already underway to meet that demand.
Fixing a hole
The Navy says more than 100,000 skilled workers are needed in the next decade to build the nation’s newest attack and ballistic submarines, including Virginia- and Columbia-class boats. Newport News Shipbuilding, which has a construction sharing agreement with General Dynamics’ Connecticut-based Electric Boat subsidiary, is tasked with building two Virginia-class boats annually and making six modular components for each Columbia-class submarine.
That 100,000-worker tally counts the service’s submarine industrial base, which includes 15,000 suppliers. The Navy says an estimated 40,000 more workers will be needed at the Navy’s four public shipyards to sustain those submarines. Those figures do not include the workers who will be needed to build other ships, including the aircraft carriers USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise at Newport News Shipbuilding, or overhaul other vessels across its fleet.
Meanwhile, Dominion Energy‘s $9.8 billion, 2.6-megawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project began taking shape in May with the installation of foundations on the ocean floor to support 78 of the offshore wind farm’s 176 electricity-generating turbines, says John Larson, the Fortune 500 utility’s director of public policy and economic development.
A September 2020 report prepared by the Hampton Roads Alliance projected that the CVOW project would require 900 direct and indirect jobs during construction through 2026 and 1,100 indirect and direct jobs annually thereafter. More recently, in mid-August, a Dominion subsidiary won rights to lease more than 176,000 acres adjacent to the CVOW project, which could add up to 4 gigawatts of offshore wind power.
At least 14 companies affiliated with the offshore wind industry, including suppliers, have either moved to or expanded in the region, Larson says. One of those companies, LS GreenLink USA, announced in July that it would build a $681 million, 750,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Chesapeake to produce high-voltage, direct-current subsea cables for offshore wind farms like CVOW. The project is expected to create more than 330 jobs.
Investments like Dominion’s and LS GreenLink’s show that the region’s efforts to promote itself as an offshore wind hub are coming to fruition, and supporting that growth will be critical, says Matt Smith, director of energy and emerging technology for the Hampton Roads Alliance, a regional economic development organization. “Ultimately,” Smith says, “we want to have kind of an ecosystem here that can … support the [offshore wind] industry on the East Coast.”
In November 2023, the workforce council received a $14 million U.S. Department of Defense grant to boost regional workforce training for the defense industrial base. That’s on top of a $11 million grant in 2022 from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to develop a maritime talent pipeline, known as the Regional Maritime Training System, or RMTS.
Reaching a 100-mile radius around Hampton Roads, the RMTS initiative includes partnerships with 30 schools, colleges and training programs to train future maritime workers in a variety of necessary skills, and it currently works directly with 18 companies that collectively make up 80% of the region’s jobs in ship-building and repair. Those numbers will continue to grow as RMTS adds partners, Avery says.
As of August, more than 1,000 people have enrolled in maritime training programs through RMTS. At least 458 RMTS graduates are now employed in maritime jobs with an average wage of $22.15 an hour, according to the workforce council.
But there’s still work to be done. According to council data, the demand for crucial industry roles, like welders, electricians, and pipefitters, to name a few, currently outstrips area supply. As an example, the region has the capacity to train 1,067 pipefitters in 2025, but with an estimated regional demand for 1,268 welders next year, there’s already a forecast deficit of 201 people to meet that need. For shipfitters, the situation is even more bleak, with a training capacity of 202 but a demand for
951 workers, for a deficit of 749 shipfitters.
In May, the workforce council launched a $2.5 million marketing campaign around RMTS, including traditional and digital advertising and a website, maritimejobsva.com, which has had more than 64,000 visitors to date. The campaign will run through December, after which the workforce council will reassess its efforts, says Avery, who notes the campaign has led to about 250 people entering a training pipeline so far.
Students in the Navy’s Advanced Training and Defense Manufacturing program in Danville learn how to use dyes to inspect parts for imperfections. Photo courtesy Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing
Schoolhouse support
Looking to the future, efforts are also expanding within area schools, expanding the GO TEC, or Great Opportunities in Technology and Engineering Careers, program to seven new Hampton Roads school systems this fall after already spreading to Hampton and Newport News. Begun in Danville and Pittsylvania County in 2018, the state-funded program introduces middle schoolers to careers in manufacturing and skills like welding and machining.
Additionally, in September, an expanded Maritime Welding Training Lab opened at Virginia Beach City Public Schools’ Technical and Career Education Center, doubling its training capacity to 80 students. The Navy-funded $2 million expansion came with the stipulation that Virginia Beach schools coordinate with the workforce council and RMTS, Avery says.
And in October, about 3,000 eighth graders from Chesapeake attended an annual Worlds of Work career expo, which this year was focused on the shipbuilding industry, Avery says. “It’s not just your old-fashioned … kind of jobs,” he says. “These are really pretty, pretty unique jobs you can get in the industry now.”
Paul D. Camp Community College, which is also building a new workforce and innovation facility in Suffolk that will feature maritime manufacturing skills training, has partnered with Newport News Shipbuilding on the Isle Maritime Trades Academy. Scheduled to open in fall 2025, the state-funded lab school will offer industry credentials in marine welding and marine electrical for area high schoolers.
And while Newport News Shipbuilding is a partner in RMTS, it also has its own ongoing efforts to build a pipeline of new workers. Xavier Beale, the shipyard’s vice president of human resources and trades administration, says the company is meeting a goal announced in March to hire 3,000 tradespeople this year. That’s out of a total 19,000 skilled trades workers the shipyard anticipates hiring during the next decade.
Beale uses the word “intentionality” to describe the shipyard’s recruitment efforts. Newport News Shipbuilding has expanded its reach along the U.S. Route 58 corridor, which stretches through Southern Virginia, to grow its footprint there, and has also expanded its outreach into Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
“When I say intentionality,” Beale says, “we embarked upon a data-driven strategy to really identify where there are experienced craft persons … [who] may not be in the maritime space but [have] the technical proficiency to come and add to the work that we’re doing here for the nation.”
About a mile from Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia Peninsula Community College is building a 16,000-square-foot facility in Newport News to add new training options, including classes in welding and marine electrical skills. Though VPCC already offers training in those areas in other parts of the region, it will also provide training in structural fitting at the Newport News facility, boosting its ability to train about 380 students annually in maritime- specific work, says Todd Estes, VPCC’s vice president of workforce development and innovation. Funded by a $2 million local grant from Newport News, which also donated land for the new building, and a $3.5 million federal grant, Estes expects the facility to be training students by summer 2025.
Tidewater Community College, which opened its skilled training center in Portsmouth in 2018, offering accelerated training in marine coating, welding, pipe-fitting and sheet metal, is also planning expansions, says Laura Hanson, TCC’s associate vice president of workforce solutions. The college is in the process of renovating space in Virginia Beach where it will add focus on training for offshore wind jobs. TCC is also looking to expand its marine trades training to Norfolk, Hanson says.
Since opening its maritime training program six years ago, TCC has trained 1,935 students, and it has expanded its training capacity from 10 welding booths to 25, reaching that total in the last year, Hansonsays. Its original focus was on pre-hire programming, offering fast-track training for people hired for specific jobs — classes run from 80 hours to 200 hours — but in more recent years, TCC added open enrollment options to meet more demand.
About 200 miles away, in Danville, IALR has also been growing toward its goal of educating 800 to 1,000 students annually for the Navy’s Advanced Training in Defense Manufacturing program, Wells says. Early next year, the program is expected to move into a new, 100,000-square-foot National Training Center (formerly known as the Regional Training Center), built with $58 million in Navy funding.
The Navy’s Advanced Training in Defense Manufacturing program at IALR has grown from about 10 instructors in spring 2023 to a combined 40 instructors and technicians, with a support staff of more than 70 employees, Wells says, and it’s continuing to hire as it plans to move into its new space.
An attractive workforce
Though its operations aren’t expected to begin until the third quarter of 2027, LS GreenLink USA is making long-lead preparations to hire, says Patrick Shim, managing director of the U.S. subsidiary of South Korean parent company LS Cable & System. As many as 250 of LS GreenLink’s projected 330-plus jobs in Chesapeake will be in production, building massive cables that can be “tens of miles” long, Shim explains.
A major factor in the company’s decision to locate in Hampton Roads is the region’s pool of skilled military veterans. About 12,000 to 15,000 service members in the region separate from active duty annually, and their background and skills make them an in-demand talent pool. LS GreenLink is certified through the state’s Virginia Values Veterans program, which helps recruit veterans for civilian jobs, and is also working with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership‘s Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, which will help with recruiting and training employees. The VEDP accelerator program, a state incentive offered at no cost to eligible companies expanding or locating in Virginia, has already set up a website that allows LS GreenLink to connect with interested job applicants.
The company has also made the rounds with area trade and high schools, as well as Tidewater Community College.
Says Shim: “We kind of covered pretty much every type of schools out there that can kind of feed us employees.”
When CoStar Group was searching for its new headquarters in 2022, Central Place Tower at 1201 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington County, with its impressive accompanying bird’s-eye views, captured the company’s attention.
Located about a quarter mile from the Potomac River, the gleaming, 391-foot-tall Class A office building features floor-to-ceiling windows across its 31 stories, reflecting the sky, all topped off by a 12,000-square-foot observation deck providing a panoramic view of the area and D.C. landmarks like the Washington Monument. The deck’s three stories of windows and a terrace looked like it would make an ideal meeting place for a company flying in clients from places like Los Angeles, London and Singapore.
Outside the 560,000-square-foot building, a 16,000-square-foot outdoor plaza provides a place to take a break or eat lunch, and across the street stands the Rosslyn Metro station, where passengers can catch a train to either of the region’s two major airports.
“What really appealed to us was the opportunity to have a significant presence up in Rosslyn on a transportation hub … and something that’s a real iconic building [where] we could gather folks coming from around the world for meetings and the like,” explains CoStar founder and CEO Andy Florance.
CoStar, a global real estate data and analytics company best known for its Apartments.com and Homes.com brands, first contacted the Virginia Economic Development Partnership about potentially relocating its corporate headquarters to Virginia from Washington, D.C., in September 2022. During CoStar’s assessment of more than 25 sites in D.C., Arlington and Fairfax County, the company narrowed in on Central Place Tower.
But the building came with a challenge for CoStar: The observation deck, then called The View of DC, came with a county easement that kept it open to the public as a tourist attraction and events space. The View of DC recorded 32,188 visits in 2023, of which about 27,000 were from non-Arlington residents.
“For us,” Florance says, “when we’re trying to bring people in from around the world and having these meetings and partner meetings and staff and client training, having a special space to gather people was important, and having public access and secure, confidential meetings would be difficult or not feasible.”
That’s when Arlington rolled up their sleeves. To address the easement question, explains Arlington Economic Development Director Ryan Touhill, his team worked with the county’s planners, attorney’s office and board “to determine, ‘Could we unwind that?’ and that way, that could give CoStar full access to this prime, trophy office building, and then [the county could] use the funding that we would get from that to reinvest in the neighborhood.”
In February, CoStar announced it would relocate its corporate headquarters to Central Place Tower, purchasing the building for a reported $339 million with plans to invest $20 million in the move. The company is formulating its renovation plans for the building, including lobby and security improvements.
Some CoStar employees are already working at Central Place Tower, and the company plans to have “a significant percentage of [its] team in the Washington metropolitan area” based there by May 2025, Florance says, with all corporate headquarters staff moving to the building by the end of 2025.
CoStar reached a deal to obtain sole use of the observation deck, paying Arlington County $13.95 million, funding the county manager proposed to be used toward the planned redevelopment of the nearby 3-acre Gateway Park, home to the annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival.
In July, the Arlington County Board approved a site plan amendment and a zoning ordinance amendment allowing CoStar private use of the observation deck and allocated the funds for the park’s redevelopment.
CoStar CEO Andy Florance, pictured at the construction site for the company’s Richmond campus expansion, cites Virginia’s strengths in higher education as well as proximity to major global airports as factors that convinced him to move his company’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Arlington. Photo courtesy CoStar Group
“This actually helped accelerate the redevelopment of that park space by nearly a decade, and so now we’ll have a truly world-class amenity in the heart of Rosslyn that will benefit those folks that come to work there every day,” Touhill says. “It’ll benefit the residents and any visitors that we bring to the park.”
Arlington’s negotiations with CoStar to reach an agreement on the observation deck is one example of the flexibility Virginia state and local officials demonstrate when attracting and retaining large economic development projects, including multiple major corporate headquarters relocations.
Lay of the land
Twenty-four Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Virginia, not counting Amazon.com, which officially opened its East Coast headquarters, HQ2, in Arlington’s National Landing area in June 2023. Additionally, since 2020, huge companies like ASGN, Boeing, RTX and CoStar have announced headquarters moves to Virginia.
Winning Amazon’s HQ2 in 2018 was a coup for Virginia, which triumphed over nearly 240 competing bids from other cities and states.
HQ2 was “a real catalyst in some ways,” says VEDP President and CEO Jason El Koubi. “I think it sent a signal to the rest of the world that Virginia is America’s East Coast tech hub, that Virginia is sort of America’s corporate hometown, a place where you have a real density of corporate headquarters that are thriving.”
Along with state and local officials’ willingness to negotiate, Virginia has attracted corporations like Amazon because of its business-friendly environment, educated workforce, location and track record.
Although the state’s recent headquarters wins have garnered big headlines, it’s not a new phenomenon. In past decades, Virginia has been the corporate base for companies like ExxonMobil, AOL, Circuit City and A.H. Robins Co. And it’s currently home to international defense contracting giants like Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
The commonwealth historically has had success attracting major headquarters, says Todd Haymore, managing director of Hunton Andrew Kurth’s global economic development, commerce and government relations consultancy and a former Virginia secretary of commerce and trade.
“Look at the broad scope of time,” Haymore says. “It’s not just happening in the last couple of years; it’s happened across decades, and I think it’s fostered by the fact that we are recognized as that pro-business, pro-growth, pro-job creation state.”
For instance, Virginia is a right-to-work state, meaning employees cannot be required to join a union as a condition of employment.
Factors such as these, along with the state’s strong foundation in higher education and workforce training, have contributed to Virginia’s record six wins as CNBC’s Top State for Business in the cable business news network’s annual rankings for 2024, 2021, 2019, 2011, 2009 and 2007.
Also aiding the state’s business-friendly reputation is its stable regulatory environment.
“Companies generally look at Virginia and say, ‘OK, doesn’t matter who’s in the governor’s mansion, doesn’t matter who’s controlling the General Assembly, it’s still going to be pro-business.’ That means a lot,” Haymore says.
CoStar worked with local and state officials, including multiple gubernatorial administrations, on bringing its campuses to Virginia and expanding its footprint in Richmond.
“Virginia generally is very supportive in their economic development efforts to help make it easy for companies like ours to make the sort of massive investments necessary to move your location into the state. They’ve been very supportive. They have gone the extra mile,” Florance says.
The state’s fiscally responsible as well, El Koubi points out. In November 2023, Fitch Ratings affirmed the Virginia government’s AAA long-term issuer default rating, the highest rating Fitch issues. In September, S&P Global Ratings affirmed the commonwealth’s AAA long-term rating on its general obligation debt outstanding, though its appropriation-backed debt received an AA+ rating. Virginia first received an AAA rating from S&P Global in 1962.
Additionally, the commonwealth has maintained a corporate income tax rate of 6% since 1972. “From a tax and regulatory standpoint, Virginia is a very reasonable, predictable, stable operating environment for businesses,” El Koubi says.
That steady corporate tax rate can reduce costs for businesses relocating from other states, providing a competitive advantage for Virginia. For example, neighbors Maryland and Washington, D.C., have an 8.25% corporate income tax rate.
When companies select his county for their headquarters, “it’s a vote of confidence in Arlington and Virginia’s business environment,” says Arlington Economic Development Director Ryan Touhill, “and like-minded companies take note of that.” Photo by Shannon Ayres
Sweetening the pot
Along with Fairfax County’s location, a factor in Hilton’s decision to relocate its headquarters there in 2009 from Beverly Hills, California, was that the move would significantly reduce operating costs, according to the Fortune 500 global hotelier.
“Northern Virginia places Hilton strategically in a central location near our nation’s capital, where we’ve had the benefit of operating in a stable business climate and have simultaneously reduced our operating costs,” Hilton’s senior vice president and global head of talent, Christine Maginnis, said in a statement to Virginia Business.
Similarly, while not always related to company costs, incentive packages offered by Virginia and its localities also help secure large economic development projects like headquarters relocations and major corporate campuses.
For example, CoStar’s Richmond campus, which predates its headquarters move to Arlington by nearly a decade, demonstrates the state’s success in tailoring benefits for companies.
In 2016, CoStar announced it would build a research and technology center in Richmond. Five years later, the company announced a $460.5 million expansion of its Richmond presence into its Corporate Innovation Campus, housing sales, marketing, software development and various other functions. CoStar expects to create 1,984 jobs and have 1 million square feet of office space in the expanded riverfront campus, which is expected to be completed in 2026.
As part of the benefit package for CoStar’s Richmond expansion, the state legislature approved a $15 million grant fund reimbursing the company for public infrastructure improvements, including commuter access and parking and pedestrian access. If, however, CoStar does not reach at least 90% of its pledged job creation and capital investment by Dec. 31, 2028, the company will have to repay an amount proportional to any missed targets.
For CoStar’s Arlington headquarters relocation, Gov. Glenn Youngkin approved $3.5 million for a Virginia Economic Development Incentive Grant (a performance-based cash grant), and a $1.25 million grant for Arlington County from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, a cash grant awarded to local governments on behalf of a company to offset or reimburse certain project-related costs.
Nevertheless, economic incentives are generally just one of several factors that companies consider when locating headquarters or other major assets in Virginia, not the deciding factor.
For instance, when Boeing announced it would relocate its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington in May 2022, the Fortune 100 aerospace and defense contractor did not receive discretionary state incentives. Nor did Fortune 100 defense contractor RTX, at the time branded as Raytheon Technologies, which announced in June 2022 that it would move its headquarters from Massachusetts to Arlington.
Planning ahead
Access to an educated labor force is another important component of a company’s considerations when locating a headquarters, and another place where Virginia is strong.
“I would say that one of the key things that attracted us to Virginia is the higher education system — Virginia Tech, VCU, James Madison, just a whole range of great educational institutions [that] gave us the confidence that we would have the workforce we’d need,” says CoStar’s Florance.
Amazon’s decision to build HQ2, its East Coast headquarters, in Arlington was a “catalyst” for other companies, says Virginia Economic Development Partnership President and CEO Jason El Koubi. “It sent a signal to the rest of the world … that Virginia is sort of America’s corporate hometown.” Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
In U.S. News & World Report’s education rankings for states, Virginia ranks No. 10 in education overall, No. 9 in pre-K-12 education and No. 20 for higher education.
In Arlington, 78% of the county population holds a bachelor’s or higher degree, according to the 2023 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey one-year estimate.
Additionally, Virginia is ripe to target businesses seeking tech talent. Part of the state’s successful bid to land Amazon HQ2, Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program aims to produce 31,000 in-demand computer science and related graduates in the next two decades. The program is 2 1/2 years ahead of schedule, according to El Koubi.
It also showed Virginia’s commitment to a long-term strategy, says Chris Lloyd, director of infrastructure and economic development with McGuireWoods Consulting: “I think that that showed that Virginia wasn’t just in it for the short term, but that we were going to build this 20-year pipeline of tech talent and obviously everything else associated with that. … Instead of thinking short term, we thought long term, and leading companies are recognizing that.”
The tech talent program has fueled large state investments in higher education infrastructure, such as Virginia Tech’s $1 billion Innovation Campus in Alexandria, which enrolled its first class in 2020 in temporary space. The campus’ first academic building is set to open in spring 2025. Meanwhile, George Mason University is building its $178 million Fuse at Mason Square, which will have 345,000 square feet for research and development labs, corporate innovation centers and related facilities.
“Almost every business operation now is in part sort of a tech operation, where, corporate headquarters included, … they need tech talent as part of their overall talent needs, and so we’re really doubling down on that and investing in our talent pipeline and solidifying that as one of Virginia’s differentiators,” El Koubi says.
When ASGN moved its headquarters from Calabasas, California, to Henrico County, announcing in 2020 that it would invest $12.4 million on the move, the decision was partly because the Fortune 1000 IT company already had a major subsidiary, Apex Systems, headquartered in Henrico, but ASGN President and CEO Ted Hanson also cited the state’s talent pipeline.
“Virginia’s strong pipeline of information technology talent for both the commercial and government sectors make it an ideal place for us to have our headquarters and continue to grow,” Hanson said in a statement at the time.
Boeing was also attracted to Virginia in part because of its talent pool, according to a statement then-CEO Dave Calhoun made during its announced relocation from Chicago: “The region makes strategic sense for our global headquarters given its proximity to our customers and stakeholders, and its access to world-class engineering and technical talent.”
Boeing had previously made a $50 million, multiyear commitment to Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus.
It’s “pretty extraordinary for a company to pick up its headquarters and move to another state,” says VEDP President and CEO Jason El Koubi, noting Virginia’s wins in attracting multiple large corporate headquarters from companies like Boeing, RTX and CoStar in recent years. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
Location, location, location
Outside of tech talent, corporate headquarters need a large professional services core, and the Northern Virginia and Richmond regions offer that, says Lloyd. If you’re going to be establishing a headquarters, he says, “you need to have large law firms and large accounting firms and large ad firms and all the cluster around you.”
Virginia’s central Eastern Seaboard location gives it another boost in headquarters location decisions. “Virginia offers corporate headquarters companies proximity to key economic hubs around the East Coast [and] critical consumer markets,” El Koubi says.
Plus, Northern Virginia features two major airports, with Washington Dulles International Airport offering nonstop flights to 59 international destinations. And the statewide Port of Virginia system, which processed 3.5 million 20-foot equivalent units in fiscal 2024, provides convenient shipping and rail access.
“In Northern Virginia, the airports are a critical factor for a global company [that has] people coming in from around the country and around the world,” says Florance. The headquarters building in Rosslyn was particularly appealing because of its location on the Metro line between Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Dulles airport, he says.
RTX’s 2022 announcement of its headquarters move to Arlington cited the Washington, D.C., region “as a convenient travel hub for the company’s global customers and employees.” And in 2009, Hilton President and CEO Christopher Nassetta touted the commonwealth’s “central location from which to operate a global organization.”
Additionally, Northern Virginia’s proximity to the nation’s capital and the Pentagon makes the region attractive for headquarters, particularly for federal contractors.
“It’s appealing to be headquartered in the D.C. area, not just from a talent access perspective or business climate perspective in Virginia, but because [companies] have close proximity to the federal government from a lobbying and government affairs standpoint,” says Michael Hartnett, JLL’s research lead for the mid-Atlantic region.
Virginia’s competitive advantages for landing corporate headquarters also have grown through the wealth of companies that have previously relocated to the commonwealth.
“Part of what makes Virginia a very business-friendly state and a very strong ecosystem for headquarters,” El Koubi explains, “is the fact that you have a very high density of corporate headquarters in Virginia. … These headquarters companies like to cluster to some extent, in part because of the talent but also because of some of the things that a corporate headquarters needs, including connectivity to the rest of the country and the rest of the world.”
On the local level, Arlington also is profiting from its record of attracting companies like Amazon, Boeing, RTX and CoStar.
“When these companies select us,” Touhill says, “it’s a vote of confidence in Arlington and Virginia’s business environment, and like-minded companies take note of that.”
What I was like in high school: A nerd involved in everything
One thing I’d change about Virginia: More marketing dollars at the state level to increase and enhance perception among C-suite executives globally. Sadly, our competitors all outspend and out-market us.
Where I see myself 10 years from now: In the same role, crushing the goals of our new strategic plan
My take on remote work: Kids are at home — long live the office!
Most interesting place I’ve visited: Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park in 1983. As soon as we left, Kīlauea began erupting and hasn’t stopped.
Did you know? A graduate of the University of West Florida and the University of Central Florida, Wakefield previously served as a marketing and communications vice president for five years at Florida’s Orlando Economic Development Commission (now the Orlando Economic Partnership).
Todd Estes, vice president of workforce development and innovation at Virginia Peninsula Community College, says the college‘s new Toano trades facility is more accessible for students. Photo by Mark Rhodes
A flat tire can mean different things to different people. Maybe it’s a postponed appointment and a call to AAA. Or maybe you have to get a ride to work from your spouse.
But for some folks, a flat tire can start a snowball effect.
“For so many, that flat tire, that’s the end, right? It means they’re missing a shift at work. If they miss a shift at work, and they’re an hourly employee, they’ve lost a day’s pay, and they still have to repair that tire. And, ‘Oh, am I going to school now, too?’ That’s how quickly it can unravel for far too many people,” says Paula Pando, president of Reynolds Community College, based in metro Richmond. “I’m going to say in our region — but I would say across the country — that they’re one life emergency from being completely derailed from fulfilling their potential.”
Meeting students where they are and helping them succeed is part of the mission behind the Virginia Community College System, which has 23 state-funded colleges with 40 campuses serving more than 200,000 students across the commonwealth.
People attend community college for many reasons, but getting certifications and training for desirable careers is a major motivation for many, especially students who are older than average college age and often juggle family and work responsibilities with their educations. Pando says the state’s community college students often are the ones who view a flat tire as a major obstacle, not just an inconvenience.
Similarly, community colleges are working with shoestring budgets, with relatively tight state funding.
Do community college students need English as a Second Language classes? Of course. Do they need remote learning classes? Sure thing. Scholarship money? Yep.
And at many of the state’s community colleges, leaders are figuring out other ways to bring learning directly to students, or at least within a bus or shuttle ride. Virginia Highlands Community College offers free bus trips to the Abingdon college from the city of Bristol and Washington and Smyth counties, while Eastern Shore Community College reimburses toll payments to students who commute via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Most other schools have agreements with local public transportation systems that allow students to ride for free or at reduced fares.
For Pando, accessibility also means offering more classes at Reynolds’ downtown Richmond campus, which is convenient to the regional bus line, and offering free shuttle service to its Parham Road campus in Henrico County.
For Virginia Peninsula Community College, which covers the region of James City County, Williamsburg, Hampton and Newport News, it means building new satellite classrooms.
“If I want to get to a program that’s only offered on one campus, or I don’t have the classes I need at my Williamsburg campus — if you had to rely on public transportation, you now have to figure out two different bus companies and what their schedules are,” says VPCC President Towuanna Porter Brannon. “If you’re traveling what for me is a 25-minute ride in my car from Newport News to Williamsburg, it could possibly [take] two hours for a student who is relying on public transportation.”
Answering student needs
To respond to these challenges, VPCC opened a trades center in Toano in 2023, offering welding and commercial driver’s license classes, which previously were only offered in Hampton, about 37 miles away.
But building new classrooms and hiring faculty, especially for specialty workforce programs, is not cheap — and community colleges can’t rely on tuition to pay for them.
At $163 per credit hour, Virginia’s community colleges offer the lowest-cost postsecondary education in the state. For most of VPCC’s students, tuition is affordable, Brannon notes, but transportation has been a big roadblock for some students when classes are offered in only one location, especially for hands-on skills training classes.
“The individuals in [the Toano] part of our service region, it’s just probably impossible for them to train at our Hampton campus,” explains Todd Estes, VPCC’s vice president of workforce development and innovation. “We were able to open that facility and offer four different trades training courses in 2023 with the help of a U.S. [Department of Labor] grant, and we also are in the process of opening another facility in southeast Newport News, which is the other end of our service area, and a historically underserved community.”
Elsewhere in the state, colleges have purchased or leased older buildings to convert them into classrooms. Wytheville Community College opened WCC WEST (standing for workforce, education and skills training) in Marion, in a former auto dealership purchased by the Smyth County Economic Development Authority. And next year, Paul D. Camp Community College is set to open a new nursing and allied health facility in the former Tidewater News building in Franklin, a project funded in part by the Sentara Foundation.
In October, Danville, Southside Virginia and Patrick & Henry community colleges signed an agreement to expand building trades programs in Southern Virginia, collaborating with K-12 schools and regional business partners.
Tidewater Community College, VPCC’s neighbor to the southeast, partners with the Virginia Ship Repair Association on its maritime trades program, says Laura Hanson, associate vice president of corporate solutions at TCC. Students complete training in welding, pipefitting, marine painting and other trades in two or three weeks.
“One of our motivators at TCC … is accessibility for our students, and our current skilled trades academy is in Portsmouth,” Hanson says. “So, when you factor in tunnels, [students] have a hard time with that, especially if you’re unemployed. So, our next goal is to acquire a location in Norfolk. And then the next step, we are renovating a building on our Virginia Beach campus,” which will also host skilled training courses for maritime trades, including offshore wind.
Set to open in June 2025, VPCC’s Newport News satellite center is a response to achieve “geographic accessibility” in a community that “historically has had transportation issues,” Estes says. “That community is not as far as, say, Toano, but if you’re talking about public transportation, it’s still an hour and a half or two hours to get to our Hampton campus, which is just prohibitive for anybody in that area.”
The Newport News facility will offer training for three maritime trades and four construction trades, and its proximity to major employer Newport News Shipbuilding will be a big benefit to students, Estes says. “So, that community will have that direct connection of training within their community, and then employment less than a mile away.”
Newport News Shipbuilding is one of multiple large employers with big expansion plans in Virginia, hoping to hire 19,000 people over the next decade for its nuclear shipbuilding workforce. And that’s just one work sector. Across the state, businesses and other institutions need to fill vacancies in health care, vehicle repair, teaching and child care, as well as in the growing industries of renewable energy, cybersecurity and manufacturing, among other fields. Many employers and state officials are looking to community colleges to train the next generation of these employees.
A heavy responsibility
The community college system is tasked with a large segment of the state’s workforce development strategy. The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a collaboration between VCCS and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, trains workers for specific job duties at no cost to businesses relocating or expanding in Virginia.
Additionally, the community colleges’ FastForward and G3 programs, created in the past decade, are specifically geared toward people training for in-demand careers, and some courses take less than a month to complete. According to the college system, more than 53,000 students have completed FastForward programs, seeing average wage increases of more than $11,000 within 12 months of receiving their new credentials.
Total enrollment in Virginia’s community colleges has grown for six consecutive semesters, after about 10 years of declining enrollment. Approximately 230,000 students enrolled in 2024.
The state has nearly 250,000 unfilled jobs, according to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, and a big reason is a dearth of relevant job skills among Virginians. In a February op-ed published by Cardinal News, VCCS Chancellor David Doré and Virginia Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Barry DuVal noted that 3.2 million Virginians lack postsecondary credentials that would qualify some of them for open jobs.
Community college students, many of whom stay in their communities after completion, are often a good fit for these jobs, but Doré and DuVal note that for every dollar spent on students at four-year public universities in Virginia, the state invests only 57 cents per community college student, which impacts how many classes community colleges can offer and leaves institutions pursuing outside funding.
The community college system, Doré says, plans to ask for $90 million in one-time funding from the state for the 2025 fiscal year, going toward facility improvements, equipment and program startup costs. VCCS also expects to request an additional $46.2 million in recurring state funding, which would go toward hiring additional faculty and support staff, as well as other costs associated with expanding educational programs.
Additionally, VCCS is asking the state to increase its investment in nondegree program FastForward by $32.5 million, Doré says. He also hopes legislators will change the funding mechanism in Virginia so that the state automatically allocates more money for higher-cost workforce programs that train in-demand professionals such as nurses, dental hygienists, welders and mechanics.
In the meantime, private and public sector partners are a crucial funding source for new projects and expansions.
“I would love to get more funding, but I can just say that I’m really very impressed by how entrepreneurial our presidents are,” Doré says. “Our presidents are really looking for every opportunity to get investment to build these workforce centers, but … it’s my hope that we’re going to make our case to the General Assembly to get funding for these programs.”
Reynolds Community College now offers HVAC and other skilled trades classes at its downtown Richmond campus, which is on the city’s bus line. Photo courtesy Reynolds Community College
‘Rob Peter to pay Paul’
As Pando and Brannon note, to fill the state’s open jobs, community college students need training courses available and accessible to them, and that’s not always easy, especially when its costs a lot more to build a welding training workshop than a traditional classroom.
“When we start talking about needing to triple the number of welders, OK, that welding job — that’s a million-dollar lab,” Pando explains. “Finding a welding instructor who is going to take a pay cut to come teach welding is another challenge, and that story is replicated in virtually all of our programs — HVAC instruction, health care programs, our automotive program.”
Asked how her college affords new high-tech facilities, Brannon replies with a laugh, “Begging,” as well as applying for “tons of grants.”
In Virginia, “there’s not a lot of infusion of state funds that help us buy new equipment … to stay competitive with what someone may be experiencing in the workplace,” Brannon adds. “And so, a lot of the ways that we have been getting funding is to ask [for donations] from our local businesses — people who are actually interested in hiring, who have a high demand for those positions.”
Ultimately, Pando says, “the way we do it is through aggressive fundraising. I mean, we’re constantly hat in hand. I had to raise money and do a song and dance and rob Peter to pay Paul to build our automotive tech building, which is modest but beautiful.”
Reynolds has partnered with Richmond city government, Loyalty Toyota and VCU Health, among other institutions, to staff and fund workforce training programs to produce auto mechanics, nurses and truck drivers. The community college’s automotive program includes a specialty master technician course for Toyotas and Lexuses, and students work at Loyalty Toyota service centers around the Richmond area, earning wages while learning on the job.
“Then the other three days are in lab with us,” Pando says, “and those students are pretty much guaranteed a job interview because they’ve been [essentially] interviewing for a few years. It’s an excellent example of an earn-and-learn program that keeps students from having to work a job at McDonald’s.”
Similarly, VPCC has received funding from Newport News Shipbuilding and other partners to help them hire and retain more faculty members, as well as advising the college on what skills employers need.
“I don’t believe we’ve gotten a generous donation from a donor in a while. We’ve been really lucky to have a community of business partners to support us, but we’re all dealing with a very similar, small profit margin,” Brannon says. “So, a lot of what we’ve been doing is trying to advocate at the state level for some sort of parity and funding when it comes to these high-cost programs.”
Freelance writer Courtney Mabeus-Brown contributed to this article.
At A Glance: Virginia Community College System
Founded
The Virginia Technical College System started in 1964 with two schools: Roanoke Technical College and Northern Virginia Technical College. In 1966, it was renamed the Virginia Community College System, and by 1972, it had expanded to all 23 community colleges in existence today. In 1987, the system began offering dual enrollment courses, allowing high school students to earn college credits at community colleges, and in 1996, the system launched online classes. In 2016, the General Assembly created the nation’s first short-term, pay-for-performance workforce training program, now known as FastForward. Today, VCCS has 40 campuses across the state, with approximately 230,000 students enrolled in 2024.
Enrollment*
Total enrollment: 207,108
Full-time students: 89,338
Student profile**
Male: 42%
Female: 56%
Unknown: 2%
Students of color: 47%
Academic programs
VCCS offers hundreds of programs of study at its 23 colleges statewide. They include two-year associate degrees, one-year certificates and career studies certificates. Some programs offer college credits that are transferrable to four-year colleges and universities, and others offer noncredit programs geared toward training for specific careers, including welding, auto mechanics and HVAC technology.
Teaching Faculty*
Full-time: 2,052
Part-time: 4,168
Tuition**
$163 per credit hour
*2023-24 academic year
**Spring 2024
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