PDF: 21st Annual Corporate Survey Complete Results - Area ...

FIGURE 17
Types of jobs at new foreign facilities:
(as percentage of total jobs)
FIGURE 18
Where new facilities are planned for Asia:
FIGURE 19
Low-skilled manufacturing jobs — 48%
High-skilled manufacturing jobs — 36%
Financial services jobs — 2%
Telecom/IT jobs — 5%
Other — 9%
China (PRC) — 59%
India — 19%
Other Asian nation — 22%
Problems encountered/anticipated when operating in Asia:
Legal — 38%
Social/cultural — 53%
Utility Infrastructure — 31%
Skilled labor shortage — 22%
Regulatory — 44%
Land availability — 3%
Transportation Infrastructure — 22%
Other — 19%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
tant,” “important,” “minor consideration,” or “of no
importance” (Figure 24). We then add the percentage
of respondents rating a factor as either “very important”
or “important” in order to rank the factors in order of
importance to the location decision. Quality-of-life factors
are ranked separately from the other site selection
factors. This year’s rankings appear in Figure 25.
Invariably, labor costs and highway accessibility are
ranked by our corporate survey-takers as the two most
important factors in the location decision, and this year
is no exception. Labor costs is ranked as the numberone
factor, considered “very important” or “important”
by 95 percent of the survey respondents. Highway
accessibility is ranked second, considered “very important”
or “important” by 90.9 percent of the survey
respondents.
Although labor costs gained 7.1 percentage points
over last year’s rating, it only moved up one place in the
rankings from second to first place. And highway accessibility,
which lost a half of a percentage point in the ratings,
slipped down one spot from first to second place
in the rankings. In other words, regardless of percentage,
these two factors are still ranked higher than all the
others.
More significant is the movement of the corporate
tax rate factor, which received a 90.8 rating this year —
up 5.8 percentage points over last year — and moved
from sixth to third place in rankings. Site selectors look
very carefully at corporate tax rate when comparing
locations in the United States or in deciding whether to