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Beacon Council Targeted Jobs Initiative Paid Big Dividends

Targeted jobs initiative One Community One Goal, which was shut down last month when a new program called Opportunity Miami replaced it, listed high new job totals in annual reports. From 2012 to 2019 Miami-Dade added 202,970 overall jobs. In 2018 and 2019, jobs added in all sectors totaled 33,243, including 6,556 in the targeted industries.

The One Community One Goal initiative was begun by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce in 1998 and continued from 2012 under the Beacon Council, the county’s economic development partnership, which ended it.

The program’s 2019 annual report – the last published – shows that until that year the county’s 1,344,113 jobs across all industries included 453,959 in targeted industries that included aviation, banking and finance, creativity and design, hospitality and tourism, life sciences and healthcare, technology, and trade and logistics.

Those jobs represented an increase in county employment of 18% from 2012 to 2019 across all industries, and of 19% in targeted sectors. Hospitality and tourism was the sector with the most jobs added (152,479) and technology showed the highest percentage increase between 2012 and 2019 – 58%.

One Community One Goal was created to provide the county a roadmap for its economic, entrepreneurial and educational success, the website of the program says.

“In the past seven years, we have created more than 200,000 new jobs. We’ve seen 19% overall growth in our target sectors, with the biggest boost in technology, where we’ve had a 58% increase in jobs,” wrote former county mayor Carlos A. Gimenez in the report.

The 2020-2021 Beacon Council annual report reveals 1,303,204 jobs in 2021 across all industries, 12% above the 1,165,761 county jobs in 2012. In 2020-2021 alone 5,989 direct jobs were created under the One Community One Goal program with an average salary of $120,000 and a capital investment of more than $229 million.

Life Sciences and Healthcare was the industry with most jobs in 2020-2021, with 146,241. Hospitality and tourism became the second largest employer during the pandemic as jobs decreased 12% to 110,135. Technology again had the biggest percentage increase (88%) with 15,678 jobs by this year.

The One Community One Goal 2018 annual report said that from 2012 to 2018 the program created 67,015 jobs. Up to that year, the county had 1,310,870 jobs across all industries, up 15% from the county’s total of 1,138,985 jobs in 2012. Target industries had 447,403 jobs by 2018, up from the 380,388 jobs in 2012.

Opportunity Miami, the initiative that came to replace the long-standing program, is headed by Matt Haggman, Beacon Council executive vice president.

“The risks we face, such as climate change, also present a generational business opportunity that can create jobs and drive our economy for decades to come,” he said in a press note. “Opportunity Miami will be a platform where the community can help identify these opportunities and act on them.”

The 2021 initiative is to present information in formats such as a weekly email newsletter, daily social media, biweekly podcast, monthly live events and a website, a press note said.

Some US companies that relocated to Miami-Dade in 2021 came from the Bay Area of California; Topeka, KS; Detroit; New York City; and Naples, FL.

 

Source:  Miami Today

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With JPMorgan And Goldman Sachs, Miami Could Become ‘Wall Street South’

Elon Musk just moved to Texas, but guess who’s (reportedly) moving to South Florida? Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen and the asset management division of Goldman Sachs. Those are the boldface names announced in news reports last week alone.

The New York Post recently reported that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is open to moving his bank to Florida, too, a move he formerly resisted because he said the schools weren’t good enough.

Miami has been dubbed “Wall Street South” since at least 1990.

In the past year or three, the migration of high-profile business to Miami, and to Florida more broadly, has gained steam. There’s no income tax and the politics are perceived as business-friendly. But the state struggles to fund education, environmental protections and mass transit. There’s also climate change, sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion to consider.

Starwood Property Trust is building a new headquarters at 2340 Collins Ave. in Miami Beach and CEO Barry Sternlicht settled in as a city resident in 2018. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn this summer moved Icahn Enterprises from New York City to the Milton Tower, located at 16690 Collins Ave. in Sunny Isles Beach, just north of Miami Beach. Chicago’s Ken Griffin just dropped $37M for property on exclusive Star Island and there are rumors that his firm, Citadel, will relocate nearby.

By publicly bragging about leaving “dead” New York for Miami, entrepreneur James Altucher sparked a fight over the Big Apple that put Jerry Seinfeld on the defensive. Miami is also becoming a hub for Black startup entrepreneurs: tech investor and Founders Fund partner Keith Rabois recently said he would move to Miami, with the fund opening a small office there.

Further north, hedge funds have been migrating to Palm Beach County. Tennis superstar Serena Williams has lived in Palm Beach Gardens for years, and her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian Sr., recently bragged on Twitter that people were following him.

Further upstate, Fisher Investments opened an office in Tampa, a city that billionaire Jeff Vinik has been championing for years. He’s building a massive development there with Bill Gates’ Cascade Investments.

According to Bloomberg, 20 bankers with Moelis & Co. told boss Ken Moelis they wanted to move to Florida, and he is allowing it. Moelis & Co. is saving about $30M a year since the company pivoted to Zoom meetings over in-person ones during the coronavirus pandemic.

Business development groups like the Downtown Development Authority and Beacon Council in Miami and the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County have helped grease such moves by identifying and bundling incentives.

There’s one billionaire, however, willing to put the kibosh on the hype: real estate investor Jeff Greene.

“This whole idea that financial services, like hedge funds, are going to be this huge jobs creator is ridiculous,” Greene told the Palm Beach Post. “You’ve got hedge funds that come down with six people and they make a big deal that we need all these office towers for them, and we don’t.”

For instance, Miami Beach recently called for office developers to put new Class-A buildings on city-owned surface parking lots. This angered some residents who feel that the city caters to wealthy developers and newcomers while ignoring the needs of the middle class.

Greene has tempered real estate hype in the past. Speaking on a Bisnow panel in 2018, Greene cautioned that low interest rates and an abundance of capital were leading to overbuilding, while Florida workers were largely low-paid.

Greene told the Post last week that Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told him the company may move outside of New York, but no location is decided.

“I think some will come down here, they will try it out, move a few people and see if more people come, but I think the idea that every hedge fund is leaving New York City and moving to Palm Beach is just silly,” Greene said. “We will always be a service economy and there is nothing wrong with that.”

 

Source:  Bisnow

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