With Hyundai on the way, Savannah must address labor, housing issues
Hyundai announced plans for an auto assembly plant Friday, one that promises to employ 8,100 workers.
That employee number jumps off the page. Consider that Hyundai's other plant in Georgia, the Kia factory in West Point, cranks out 340,000 cars a year with a much smaller workforce, around 2,700. Is this factory going to be that much bigger? Is the site going to include an EV battery manufacturing facility as well? Are EVs just that much more labor intensive?
Yes. Yes. And yes.
The labor number led me to doing some Google research. I grew up very near where Honda opened its first U.S. plant several decades back. My mother actually worked there on the assembly line for many years. I watched it grow from one factory, building motorcycles, to a second for Accords to a third for Civics. The Marysville, Ohio campus is now home to four factories and employs 15,000, with an engine plant located not too far away.
The labor number doesn't include the dozens of third-party suppliers. They employ thousands more.
Why this is interesting is the Savannah-area unemployment rate is 3.2%. We have a labor shortage. Once Hyundai breaks ground and starts to build out, the company and local economic development leaders will need to start recruiting around the state and region.
We also have a housing shortage. Homebuilders will need to ramp up development. Not so long ago, people looked at plans for the 9,800 homes in New Hampstead and asked, "Who is going to live out there?" Now, New Hampstead doesn't look ambitious enough, and landowners near I-16 in Bryan, Effingham and Bulloch counties must be salivating.
Again, that takes me back to Honda in Marysville. The factory was built well outside of that town. It didn't take long for the town to become a city and for the stretch of road that connected the two to become subdivision central.
Expect the same here.
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— Written by Opinion columnist Adam Van Brimmer. Read more posts like this in the Savannah Town Square Facebook group.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Hyundai auto assembly plant in Bryan County will employ 8100 workers
