North Carolina's economic development efforts have yielded the announcement of more new jobs in the state than any other year on record, Gov. Josh Stein announced this week.
With about a month to go in 2025, North Carolina has announced economic development successes that total 33,745 new jobs and $23.1 billion in investments.
"The state is strong and growing, and we’re excited about it. What we want to do is make sure that we do not relent, we do not let up, we keep on our toes, we keep aggressive. Because it’s about delivering opportunity for people," Stein told reporters Wednesday.
Stein and economic development officials said the state's workforce is one key factor in recruitment, as is the collaboration between the Democratic governor's administration, Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly and local economic development officials.
"Economic development projects are complex and require cooperative support that transcends county lines and political affiliation to persuade a company that our state can meet their needs and create great jobs," N.C. Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley said Wednesday.
CNBC named North Carolina its top state for business in 2025, marking the third time in four years that the state has won the award.
This year's major job announcements were paced by JetZero, whose Guilford County airplane manufacturing facility is expected to cost $4.7 billion and create 14,500 jobs. That's the most of any single economic development project in North Carolina's history.
Where has NC had success?
Christopher Chung, the CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, said the state's recruitment efforts intentionally target certain industries, including aerospace.
"We want these industries to be ones that are high growth, that produce the kind of jobs that have wages above our county average and above the state average," Chung said, adding that geographic diversity across the state is also an important factor.
North Carolina also saw success in advanced manufacturing, biotech and electric vehicles in 2025.
Other major announcements included Vulcan Elements announcing it would invest $918.4 million in a Benson magnet factory that will employ as many as 1,000 people; Jabil investing $500 million to create 1,181 jobs in Rowan County to build artificial intelligence infrastructure; and pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis announcing it will invest $771 million in Durham and Morrisville, creating 700 new jobs.
Another area where North Carolina saw increased success this year was headquarters and office space.
Charlotte has seen the announcement of two significant headquarters in recent weeks, with Scout Motors announcing about 1,200 jobs that will average $172,878 annual salaries at its new office space and Maersk moving its North American headquarters to the city, adding 500 jobs with average annual salaries of about $100,000.
"There weren't a whole lot of big office announcements up until this year. I think that's been one of the bright spots and throughlines of 2025 is, office deals are coming back," Chung said.
Pledges of jobs aren't a guarantee of new employment positions, but the state saw at least 1,000 new jobs announced in both eastern and western North Carolina, as well as the Sand Hills region. Companies also announced more than 4,000 planned jobs in the Triangle, 8,000 in Charlotte and 16,000 in the Triad, which received a huge boost from JetZero's planned facility.
Using incentives to bring in projects
Often, competing for large economic development projects requires North Carolina and local officials to offer incentives, with the hope that adding jobs will offer a broader benefit than payments the state agrees to make to the company or tax revenue the local governments agree to forego.
In JetZero's case, for example, North Carolina agreed to an incentive package that could pay the company as much as $1.01 billion over the next 37 years. Commerce officials found in an analysis that the number of jobs added and economic activity generated from the plant would still result in about $3.74 billion in revenue for the state over the same period.
Incentives are worth using, Stein said, because companies must meet agreed-upon job creation targets in order to receive benefits.
"The state doesn't outlay money to the companies unless the companies meet their goals — their investment goals and their job goals. If they don't, then they don't get the incentive," Stein said.
