If the poaching of Midwest jobs keeps up, white-collar opportunities in Atlanta will far outnumber jobs in Ohio. For more information on jobs in Atlanta, click here.

According to AJC.com, Atlanta has been regularly poaching Midwestern companies for over a decade now.

First up was NCR, the famed, 125-year-old cash register company that moved its headquarters from Dayton, Ohio, to Duluth last June.

Then came Fischbein, which announced in July that Suwanee, not Cleveland, would be the site for a new production line.

Finally, earlier this month, aluminum can maker Novelis quit Cleveland and moved its North American headquarters to Buckhead.

But Atlanta officials insist that they are not targeting Ohio specifically.

“We don’t have a ‘Target Ohio’ strategy,” said Hans Gant, a top Chamber recruiter. “And we’ don’t really say to the Rust Belt: ‘Come to the New South.’ We always target companies that have essentially out-grown their current locations. As companies become global players their needs change dramatically.”

According to the article on AJC.com, Poaching business from the Rust Belt isn’t a new phenomenon. Midwest companies have been heading to the Sun Belt for decades to take advantage of balmy weather, tax breaks and non-union workers.

But the quantity, and quality, of the relocations augurs well for Atlanta. NCR, Novelis and Newell Rubbermaid moved headquarters – and hundreds of well-paid, white-collar jobs – from the Midwest to Atlanta, burnishing the city’s reputation as a corporate magnet.

In all, 43 Midwestern companies have established headquarters, warehouses, distribution centers, factories, branch offices or testing labs across the region since 1999, according to the Metro Atlanta Chamber. Ohio alone has shipped 20 of those companies or their units down Interstate 75. Only three other states — California, Florida and Texas — have been more generous toward Atlanta.

If Ohio is feeling a bit of animosity regarding the poachings, they are not verbalizing it.

“No one company moving from one place to another is a body blow,” Mark Barbash, chief economic development officer for the state of Ohio, said Monday. “Everybody looks at Ohio as the Rust Belt; we have to get rid of that impression. The whole national economy is in transition.”

The article points out that each company transition is different, and many midwestern companies have stuck around for decades and do not plan on relocating, because there are many advantages to remaining in this locale.

Fischbein found cheaper accommodations for a new factory to make packaging equipment. Novelis’ global headquarters was already located in Atlanta; it made logistical sense for the North American headquarters to follow.

NCR – the Fortune 500 relocation coup of the year – chose Gwinnett for numerous reasons, according to CEO Bill Nuti and others. Hundreds of NCR employees already had white-collar jobs in Duluth and blue-collar ones in Columbus. A research tie-in with Georgia Tech was crucial. And Georgia and local communities gave the ATM maker $109 million in incentives to seal the deal.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 10:51 pm and is filed under jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.