By the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development
Pennsylvania has always been a place where business thrives and innovators are creating the technologies of tomorrow. But with new leadership and new energy that came on at the beginning of 2023, the Commonwealth is doubling down on its strengths. Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration has made economic development a top priority – and state government, the business community, the nonprofit sector, labor, and education are united in increasing Pennsylvania’s competitive position and advancing innovation. The new momentum is evident in the many successes and accomplishments through last year and into 2024. In fact, the Shapiro Administration helped secure more than $1.2 billion in private investment across the state in 2023.
Building on Strength
One of the reasons why the new administration was able to hit the ground running so quickly was because of the strategic advantages that already give Pennsylvania a competitive edge. Its proximity to major U.S. markets – located within a days drive of 40 percent of the U.S. population and 60 percent of the Canadian population – means that companies can get their goods to market quickly and efficiently. Pennsylvania’s world class higher education institutions produce 190,000 skilled graduates every year and fuel a diverse, talented workforce of more than 6.5 million people. And its unique mix of quality of life and affordability make it a place where executives and workers alike want to live. That’s why 23 Fortune 500 companies and over one million small businesses call Pennsylvania home.
A Banner Year for Streamlining Business Operations
Even with these advantages, the Shapiro Administration immediately got to work tackling some of the state’s biggest challenges. One of the first items on the agenda was the creation of the Office of Transformation and Opportunity (OTO) in early 2023, which is cutting red tape and removing internal barriers within state government that are slowing down business operations. OTO is enabling easier, faster, and more effective service to the business community within Pennsylvania, around the country, and across the globe as they seek to make competitive business investment decisions.
OTO has been hard at work facilitating important communication and efficiency across the entire administration throughout 2023. The office’s success has led to dramatically quicker processing times for common bureaucratic sticking points like acquiring business licenses. It used to take up to eight weeks for the Commonwealth to process a business license – and now it takes just three days. OTO is continuing to work on streamlining permitting processes and other inefficiencies to ensure the state government moves at the speed of business.
A Strategy for the Next Decade
It was important for the Shapiro Administration to ensure that its policies and investments were guided by real data and a long-term strategy that would set the Commonwealth’s business community up for success for years to come. And after months of hard work spearheaded by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development in collaboration with the private, nonprofit, and academic sectors, Governor Shapiro unveiled the state’s first comprehensive, 10-year economic development strategy in nearly two decades. Building on the progress made through the beginning of the administration, the new economic development strategy sets forth five ambitious goals for Pennsylvania: 1.) investing in our economic growth to compete, and prioritizing economic development investments that capitalize on Pennsylvania’s strengths; 2.) continuing to make government work at the speed of business; 3.) opening doors of opportunity for all Pennsylvanians, and increase pathways to the workforce that enable every Pennsylvanian to secure a family-sustaining job; 4.) encouraging the rapid growth of innovation; and 5.) building vibrant and resilient regions where every community flourishes.
The strategy also calls for real, concrete strategic initiatives to accomplish these five goals – many of which DCED and the Shapiro Administration has already begun implementing, such as a $10 million pilot program for site development and a new website, PAGetsItDone.com, to make it easier for CEOs, site selection consultants, and commercial real estate professionals to learn more about the advantages of doing business in Pennsylvania.
The strategy also acknowledges that no state can be all things to all businesses. That’s why, using data, the strategy lays out Pennsylvania’s five key industries that will be the primary focus of pro-growth policies and investments: agriculture, energy, life sciences, manufacturing, and robotics/technology. These are the industries that will lay the foundation for Pennsylvania’s economy moving forward – and where the business climate will continue to get better and better as the strategic plan’s initiatives are implemented.
The economic development strategy can be found in its entirety on PAGetsItDone.com.
Big Investments Planned
The new economic development strategy is not a report that will simply sit on a shelf. In fact, it has already been used to inform Governor Shapiro’s bold economic development investments he is calling for in his budget proposal for fiscal year 2023-2024. The budget proposal includes transformational investments totaling $600 million for economic development – investments that will help implement the strategy, increase Pennsylvania’s competitiveness, and deliver real economic growth.
The largest of these proposals is a call for a major $500 million investment for site development. Site selectors and executives know the value of having pad-ready sites available to them. If passed, this investment would dramatically increase Pennsylvania’s inventory of pad-ready, attractive business sites where businesses can move quickly and thrive.
Momentum is Growing
The successes from the Shapiro Administration have been complimented by the announcement of major business projects such as Re:Build, a new $81 million manufacturing hub to bring manufacturing and assembly projects in the energy, life sciences, robotics, electric mobility, satellite communications, and aerospace industries to western Pennsylvania. On the other side of the state, Purolite, an Ecolab company and manufacturer of high-quality resins used to make life-saving drugs, announced it will expand and invest $190 million to create the first U.S. operations of its Global Biologics Division in southeastern Pennsylvania, creating 175 new jobs. And in the northeast part of the Commonwealth, EMD Electronics announced a $300 million investment in semiconductor specialty gases manufacturing in a new 96,500-square-foot facility, creating the largest integrated specialty gases facility in the world.
There’s no question that momentum is building. The economic development and business community in Pennsylvania is abuzz with excitement over the string of recent wins and the powerful new direction for the Commonwealth. And with more coordination and collaboration than ever before – and guided by a new data-driven economic development strategy – the next several years are bound to be exciting ones for businesses located in Pennsylvania.
