2024 Results

2024 Hit All the Marks

While many metro areas across the country faced economic challenges over the past year, the Greater FM MSA has emerged as a success story.  Fueled by a strong job market, business expansions, and a thriving local economy, the region has demonstrated resilience and growth. From our trademark high labor participation rates and accompanying low unemployment to new investments in key industries, the region continues to set itself apart as a dynamic and prosperous metro.  

Guided by our annual work plan and supported by Innovate28, a four-year strategy with the FMWF Chamber to align business, workforce, and public policy programming, we work to proactively support three targeted sectors: AgTech, BioScience and Autonomous Systems. In addition to supporting all existing primary sector companies, we allocate additional time and resources to these sectors as they provide the greatest opportunity for our business recruitment efforts.

In 2024, six of our 20 successful projects represented one of these three sectors, with more in the pipeline for 2025.  

Defining Success

For any economic development organizations, success is generally measured by job creation, capital investment and additional square footage added to a market. For the GFMEDC, we utilize a third-party applied economist to run an analysis that provides critical data to understand how primary-sector projects drive the region’s economic growth. 

In 2024, the GFMEDC assisted 20 projects that created 221 new jobs. These companies injected more than $166 million of new capital investments and utilized an additional 653,000 square feet of production space.

Breakdown of the 20 projects:

Economic Impact

The GFMEDC owns a unique mission to support primary-sector companies. Achieving our mission means more jobs, more capital investment and a stronger regional economy which benefits all. We are happy to report our work is producing results.

In fact, our efforts provide a return to all businesses, governments and citizens, whether they are a current investor or not. That’s because the growth of all primary-sector companies positively impacts all other businesses and organizations regionally. Check out our economic impact section to see some of the results.

More on Economic Impact

 

Source for Impact Data: Bangsund, Dean A. 2024. Analysis of Recent GFMEDC Business Expansions on FM Area Economy