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    • Economic Development Plan

    2019-2021 Update

    To: The Honorable Chairman and Members, Pima County Board of Supervisors

    From: C.H. Huckelberry, County Administrator

    Re: Economic Development Plan 2019-2021 Executive Summary

    Since 2012, when the County first adopted an Economic Development Plan, our region has finally fully recovered from the losses of the Great Recession. Our population is growing, new housing starts are climbing, household income has grown by nearly 20 percent and, with unemployment below five percent, we are statistically at full employment.

    However, there is still a lot more we need to accomplish. We need to continue to diversify our economy by growing new sectors such as logistics, manufacturing and space, and we need to continue to support and foster our existing employers and industrial sectors, such as aerospace, defense and mining.  We need to greatly improve how we are educating and training our workforce so that we are meeting the needs of current employers and able to meet the employment needs of new and expanding businesses in the future. 

    Despite the statistical full employment status, there are still large numbers of underemployed county residents and too many of our key employers are having to recruit from outside the area to fill high-wage skilled jobs such as electrical and software engineers. 

    While the 2019 update of the Economic Development Plan continues to focus on maintaining or growing what is already strong in our local economy, and making the investments needed to attract new employers to build new employment sectors, it also focuses heavily on developing our local workforce to meet our region’s current and future employment needs. 

    To gauge the effectiveness of the Economic Development Plan over the last three years, the full cash value of the tax base increased from $79,538,156,234 in 2015 to what is projected to be $95,239,695,887 in 2019. This represents more than a $15.7 billion increase in the full cash value of the tax base in three years. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment increased from 441,671 in 2015 to 473,491 in May of 2019 adding 31,821 Pima County residents to the workforce. And Sun Corridor, Inc., with the help of Pima County and others, facilitated job expansions and relocations that resulted in the creation of 17,121 direct jobs in that three-year period. 

    This economic momentum in Pima County is expected to continue through the remainder of 2019. As of this month, Sun Corridor, Inc. has 55 companies it is currently engaged with that have the prospect of adding 7,956 new jobs and $1.3 billion in capital investment to our regional economy.

    ED Plan 2021
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    Download The Pima County Economic Development Plan 

    - Read or download the entire Economic Development Plan, 2019-2021.
    - Click this link to read or download the Executive Summary.
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    Economic Development Plan, 2015-2017

    Contact
    Chuck Huckelberry,
    County Administrator

    (520) 724-8661

    130 W. Congress, 10th Floor
    Tucson, AZ 85701


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