100 factors or trends could impact a company’s decision to grow where they are or travel elsewhere. However, Montrose Group annually releases their top ten trends impacting corporate site location decisions.
First, let’s discuss a “trend” versus a “fad.” The mullet haircut hopefully was just a fad- popular in the short term but not a long-term change in hair fashion. Economic globalization is a trend. Trends last and are noticed when pioneers and settlers adopt them. Trends are created by markets, demographics, macroeconomics conditions, consumer attitudes, and innovation.
The Montrose Group’s top ten 2022 corporate site location trends include:
- The cost and availability of skilled workers will remain the largest strategic challenge and opportunity for regions searching for corporate site location opportunities.
- With work from home a social and economic reality, empty offices will be transitioned into residential units attractive to corporate site location projects in 2022.
- Work from home will also impact the negotiations and operation of economic development incentives as cities and states work to determine how to count a company’s employees for purposes of performance based economic development incentives or whether to count them at all.
- Work from home trends also impacts the importance of a region’s quality of place like never as communities have a chance to capture workers rather than worrying about who they work for.
- Logistics and fulfillment centers will continue to drive industrial growth as COVID 19 adds gasoline to the e-commerce fire.
- The transition to electric vehicles in the global automobile industry will drive growth in the automotive industry and spur on more corporate site location projects in this sector.
- The U.S. automobile industry’s mandate that the computer chip supply chain move back to American shores will drive large scale microprocessor computer chip manufacturing projects across the United States.
- Tech industry stars focused on automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), biotech and data centers will remain hot prospects for corporate site location projects.
Montrose Group sees a strong 2022 for the U.S. economy and American company prospects appear to be strong with growth prospects across the U.S. Remote work is a reality impacting corporate site location as is the continued growth of e-commerce. The lack of job ready sites and skilled workforce will likely be the main limiting factor for company success in a region.
Contact Dave Robinson at [email protected] if you need assistance with a corporate site location project or other economic development matters.