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A more than $20 million state-of-the-art commercial cold storage facility is coming to Edgecombe County and creating more than 100 permanent jobs in the region. Lionchase Holdings Inc., a privately held asset management firm, recently agreed to build a $22.7 million, 200,000-square-foot facility at the Tarboro Commerce Center, a manufacturing and distribution park, located at exit 484 off U.S. 64 in Tarboro. The Carolinas Gateway Partnership, town of Tarboro and Lionchase Holdings all were part of the agreement for the planned development. Construction is slated to start this summer with a planned completion timeline of 18 months for the new...

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to substantially increase the number of U.S. apprenticeships from the current 500,000 (minuscule for the size of the economy) by doubling the amount the government spends on apprenticeship programs. Trump’s emphasis on this plan is cause for optimism that he will significantly improve the number and quality of apprenticeships in the economy. Trump’s plan will be a boon to employers. First, they will have a strong role in its composition through a task force that Trump announced. Successful apprenticeship programs work best when designed by employers around their own needs. The...

A South Korean company – Simwon America Corp. – has selected Lathrop as the location for its first manufacturing plant in the United States. The auto parts manufacturer is locating in the old Medline Distribution Center on D’Arcy Parkway right in the heart of Lathrop’s commercial and light industrial hub right behind the Tesla Facility. While details about the corporation – which only filed its paperwork with the California Secretary of State last year – are scare, speculation points to their operation potentially supplying Tesla with parts which would make it the first supporting business that has located to the...

The Arlington facility will consist of two manufacturing and warehouse buildings spanning more than 1.2 million square feet. General Motors has outlined plans to build a new supplier park to help support its Arlington Assembly plant in Texas. The facility will consist of two manufacturing and warehouse buildings, spanning more than 1.2 million square feet. The company expects the park to house up to 1,250 employees and bring 850 new jobs to Arlington. "GM estimates nearly 600 of the new manufacturing and professional jobs created in these facilities will replace work previously done outside of the US," the company says....

Texas is a highway state. This reality stems from the need to meet the mobility demands of both sprawling metropolitan regions and vast rural areas.Paying for the state's massive system of highways has always been a challenge, however. Estimates from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) put the state's highway expansion and maintenance needs alone at nearly $383 billion by 2040. Existing public funding, projected to be $70 billion over the next decade, will not be able to cover that cost without unprecedented funding increases after 2026.While Texans are clearly amenable to paying for better roads — two recent state...

Indian-American CEOs Indra Nooyi of Pepsico and Ajay Banga of Mastercard along with India's IT major Wipro on Saturday joined scores of US companies in welcoming President Donald Trump's ambitious apprenticeship programme aimed at developing job-related skills among the workforce. . . "We applaud the president's commitment to industry-driven apprenticeships as a powerful tool to build the skilled workforce prepared for the jobs of the 21st century," Business Roundtable -- a group of chief executive officers of leading US companies -- said in a full-page advertisement released in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times today. . ....

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) -- A Connecticut company plans to add 180 positions after it moves to a new location in Dubuque....

Competition in the U.S. grocery sector is about to get more fierce. Discount grocery chain Aldi is expected to unveil on Monday plans to invest $5 billion to open nearly 900 stores and remodel hundreds more in the U.S. The expansion, over the next five years, puts the German grocer on track to becoming the third-largest food retailer in the U.S. by store count, behind the larger Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kroger Co., and a growing threat to traditional food retailers. Aldi said it is expected to have a total of 2,500 locations across the U.S. by 2022. Its plan...

Digi-Key Electronics announced its future plans to create over 1,000 new jobs and build a 1,000,000-square-foot building expansion facility located adjacent to its current headquarters in Thief River Falls MN. Huge cost and competitive hurdles needed to be overcome compared to other location options, but “The State of Minnesota and local Thief River Falls and Pennington County leaders took decisive action to support our growth”, according to Dave Doherty, Digi-Key’s president and chief operating officer. Local Representative and Assistant House Majority Leader Dan Fabian along with Representative Deb Kiel and Senators Mark Johnson and David Tomassoni, worked with legislative leaders...

Select Comfort Corp. will establish a technical support contact center near New Orleans, in the Elmwood business corridor of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. The company will lease more than 28,000 feet of commercial space in an existing building for its new center at 1333 South Clearview Parkway in Elmwood, Louisiana. The project will create 225 new direct jobs, according to Louisiana Economic Development. “Select Comfort is an impressive, fast-growing company that is the innovation leader in the mattress industry,” Governor John Bel Edwards said. “With our talented workforce and healthy business climate, Louisiana is a great fit for innovative consumer brands....

The New York Works initiative aims to create a total of 100,000 new jobs, in areas ranging from tech to creative and cultural sectors. New York artists seeking studios, nonprofits facing rising rents, and musicians seeking rehearsal spaces may have some reasons to be hopeful about the future. In a new initiative called New York Works, the city government aims to cultivate creative sector jobs and to provide artists with workspaces. On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the New York Works initiative, which aims to create 100,000 well-paying jobs (think $50,000 a year or a realistic starting point to...

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to expand apprenticeship programs for students and workers: We're joined today by Secretary Acosta, Secretary Ross, and Administrator McMahon as we prepare to make a historic announcement to train Americans for the jobs of the future. We have a lot of companies moving into this country. You see the unemployment rate is at a very, very low level. Job enthusiasm and manufacturing, business enthusiasm is at record levels; never been higher. And a lot of good numbers are coming out, including almost $4 trillion in gain to the stock markets since the election...

New applications for unemployment benefits fell 8,000 to 237,000 in the first full week of June, the Department of Labor reported Thursday. Investors had expected 243,000 new jobless claims. Low jobless claims are a good sign. They indicate that layoffs are relatively rare and that laid-off workers are not showing up at state unemployment agencies to collect benefits. In recent months, jobless claims have scraped the lowest levels in decades, providing one of the most positive signs of the U.S. economy's health. At a press conference Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said that the labor market appears to be...

A Taiwanese company that assembles Apple's iPhones and other electronics is considering building a plant in Wisconsin that could employ thousands of people and give Gov. Scott Walker a huge political boost as he prepares to run for re-election. A person with direct knowledge of the negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday that the state is in talks with Foxconn. At least one other upper Midwest state, Michigan, is also pursuing the plant. President Donald Trump alluded to negotiations with an unspecified company during a visit to Milwaukee on Tuesday, saying...

Hodgkinson had a history of violence that did not rise to the level to prohibit him from legally owning a firearm. He was the foster father of at least two girls. The first, Wanda Ashley Stock, 17, committed suicide in 1996 by pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire after a few months of living with the Hodgkinsons, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. The Hodgkinsons gave an interview to the paper after her suicide, calling her a “very practical, level-headed girl.”

While the Democrats and their media allies attempt to bring down the Trump presidency with a determination reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote’s pursuit of the Road Runner, the president’s efforts to shrink the size and scope of government are producing some very positive economic results. President Trump’s focus on reining in the administrative state has significantly reduced both the number of existing regulations and the output of new regulations, driving business optimism. Unlike policies that increase the oppressiveness of government, policies that incentivize business growth (like deregulation) produce jobs, opportunity and prosperity. It takes real determination to ignore the numbers....

President Trump is trying to focus this week on one thing: Jobs, jobs and more jobs. The White House is dubbing it "workforce development week" and has filled the president's schedule with workplace visits, speeches and roundtable discussions on the subject. The aim is to present a fix to a big U.S. problem: job skills. What's clear: Trump wants to make a big commitment to expand apprenticeship programs. What's unclear: How his budget will pay for it and whether apprenticeships alone can fix the country's massive job skills gap. Trump's budget proposal allocates $90 million for grants to apprenticeships, but...

The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times Eastern Daylight Time): 5:30 p.m. President Donald Trump says he wants every high school in America to offer apprenticeship programs. Trump also says at a round table conversation at Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin that he loves the "name Apprentice" — a reference to the reality television show he used to host.....

CHINESE consumers’ spending on luxury goods is set to double to 1 trillion yuan (US$147 billion) by 2025, or 37 percent of the overall global luxury market, McKinsey said in a report yesterday. Chinese consumers will account for most of this 2.7 trillion yuan growth in value of the global luxury goods market, with more sophisticated Chinese buyers being a major force behind the rise. Around 7.6 million Chinese households spent an average of 71,000 yuan on luxury goods per year, according to McKinsey. Most of the luxury shoppers are turning from affluent consumers to wealthy consumers with average annual...

The Senate on Tuesday narrowly turned back a bipartisan bid to rebuke Saudi Arabia and reject President Donald Trump's plan to sell the kingdom more than $500 million in precision-guided munitions, sparing the new Republican administration an embarrassing defeat. The vote Tuesday was 53-47, clearing the way for the sale to be finalized. The precision munitions are part of Trump's proposed $110 billion arms package to Riyadh, which the administration said would create U.S. jobs while also improving a key ally's military capability. But opponents of the deal, led by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have been...