Jets and Jobs in the Tarheel State

Honda Aircraft Company, the North Carolina-based aerospace subsidiary of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and maker of the popular HA-420 HondaJet and HondaJet Elite II, has announced plans to build a new Greensboro plant, thereby bringing 280 new jobs to its home city over the next five-years. The project is funded, in part, by a $3.43-million job development investment grant pledged by the Tarheel State’s government.

Honda Aircraft chose Greensboro for the new facility over Alberta, Alabama.

All told, Honda Aircraft—which recently disclosed plans to develop and bring to market a stretched, longer-range iteration of its legacy HondaJet—expects to invest $55.7-million in the undertaking by December 31, 2027—in so doing, bringing its total investment in the state to over $335-million.

Honda Aircraft currently employs 723 full-time and 93 contact personnel in North Carolina’s Guilford County. The company’s parent entity, American Honda Motor Company, employs an additional 562 workers in the town of Swepsonville in neighboring Alamance County.

Honda Aircraft expects to pay the inbound wave of new employees an average annual wage of $88,761—so states the North Carolina Economic Investment Committee, which approved the grant.

Guilford County residents, in 2023, collect an average yearly salary of $57,190.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper set forth in a statement: “HondaJet’s creation of nearly 300 good-paying jobs is yet another example of why NBC named North Carolina as the number one state in the country to do business for the second year in a row.”

Governor Cooper added: “This decision shows our state’s commitment to developing a skilled workforce, not only in the key industry of aerospace with a flagship brand like HondaJet, but in the entire advanced manufacturing arena.”

The state-provided job development investment grant also includes the addition of $381,600 to North Carolina’s Industrial Development Fund Utility Account—a monetary resource that helps rural areas and communities throughout the state finance infrastructure updates for purpose of attracting new businesses.

In 2007, Honda Aircraft received a state of North Carolina job development investment grant for the creation of its headquarters at Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO). The state has since paid the aircraft-maker an additional $6.68-million. The 2007 grant resulted in the creation of 321 jobs and retention of another 616 positions.

Economists posit Honda Aircraft’s new Greensboro manufacturing facility stands to grow North Carolina’s economy by $2.37-billion over the grant’s 12-year term.

FMI: www.hondajet.com