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This is actually a brilliant location for them. One of those places that has much more going for it than people not from the region would realize. Internationa

This is actually a brilliant location for them. One of those places that has much more going for it than people not from the region would realize. International airport, large rail depot, extremely low cost of living and a city/region that has more good restaurants and activities than might be expected. Ohio State University is in the city and is a huge school that is rapidly growing in academic standing. Road transit in the area is also very good allowing access to any part of the city from any other part in rapid fashion. Good schools, relatively low crime, etc. Probably the only drawback, from a lifestyle point of view, would be the winter and that's not even that bad, compared to other winter regions.

planetsprite 5y ago
However it's misguided. Cost of labor is still 10x higher than a plant with the same productivity in a relatively poorer country. American manufacturing is mostly indirect social welfare now, it's not economically efficient.
- enkid 5y ago
  Is cost of labor really one of the major costs of a semiconductor plant? Plants in South Korea and Taiwan are economical and they have relatively high labor costs, so I'm not sure I buy this.
  - vizzier 5y ago
    This was my thought as well, chip production has to be so necessarily automated to maintain a clean state that it feels like the cost of engineers to maintain systems is always going to be high, but also a small cost of the overall system. I'd love some real numbers.
  - pm90 5y ago
    The only reason it’s not in China is because they don’t have ready access to the technology that allows for this. All the “fabulous” chip makers in Asia are all US allies.
- bendhoefs 5y ago
  It's not like semiconductor plants are using the cheapest possible labor they can get their hands on. I imagine there are very few people working in semiconductor plants that don't have post secondary education.
jnorthrop 5y ago
Not to mention low probability of natural disasters: Earthquakes, tornados, wild fire, hurricanes, etc.
- politician 5y ago
  Access to large amounts of fresh water.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  Half of Ohio is flat, and gets lots of storms that blow through the plains and prairies from the west, so not exactly low probability of tornadoes. Source: I grew up in central Ohio. Public schools made it a point to practice tornado drills. In addition, there was an old Cold War-era air raid siren a block from the house I grew up in that had been repurposed and tested for tornado warnings. One of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rRSY0dRIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rRSY0dRIU Edit: read about Xenia, Ohio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenia,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenia,_Ohio > Xenia has a history of severe storm activity. According to local legend, the Shawnee referred to the area as "the place of the devil wind" or "the land of the crazy winds" (depending upon the translation). > On April 3, 1974, a tornado rated F5 on the Fujita scale cut a path directly through the middle of Xenia during the 1974 Super Outbreak > Xenia was struck by an F2 tornado on April 25, 1989, and again by an F4 tornado on September 20, 2000.
  - eeeeeeehio 5y ago
    Even large, damaging tornadoes have quite localized impacts (max of maybe a mile in path width) -- and you don't generally do much more than stay up to building code in order to prepare for one. In contrast, earthquakes devastate entire areas and require substantial changes to building construction in order to protect against them. The probability of a large, damaging tornado at a particular spot in Ohio is quite small compared with the risk of damaging earthquakes in other locations. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-will-occur-los-angeles-area-san-francisco-bay-area https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-will-o...
N1H1L 5y ago
The midwest has some of the greatest engineering schools in the nation. I have been beating this drum hoarse for a few years now - but it's true. Specifically, members of the Big 10 conference are probably the best engineering schools conference in the world. Within 300 miles from Columbus (where you have Ohio State - Big10), you have Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, UIUC, Indiana, Purdue from the Big 10 along with Carnegie Mellon, Case Western and Pitt. Even the state of California doesn't have so many so good tech schools.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  My two c, I have been left with a very good impression of people from Penn State and Michigan State, very talented and diligent at work.
- rxhernandez 5y ago
  I'm sure there's more great ones in California but I can count 14 off the top of my head; I think all of them are nearly within 300 miles of LA too. 1. Caltech 2. Stanford 3. Cal 4. UCLA 5. Harvey Mudd 6. USC 7. UCSD 8. UCD 9. UCSB 10. CPSLO 11. UCI 12. CPP 13. UCSC 14. UCR
  - N1H1L 5y ago
    I will take Stanford and the UCs. Every other school in that list comes below the Midwestern powerhouses
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Idk what we consider the “Midwest to be” but here are some schools generally in the area that are good. Happy to delete any you don’t like. No particular order. ;) 1. Northwestern 2. Notre Dame 3. Wisconsin Madison 4. Ohio State 5. Minnesota Twin Cities 6. Carnegie Mellon 7. University of Chicago 8. Purdue 9. Penn St 10. Washington University St. Louis 11. UIUC 12. Case Western 13. Michigan So there are plenty of world class educational institutions in the Midwest. Frankly I’d take this list over your list and that’s not including other brand name universities like Indiana, Pitt, Michigan State, Nebraska, or Iowa, some of which do “non-sexy” research in agricultural science and other fields. Ohio State has the only undergraduate wedding engineering program in North America even. It really is an absolute powerhouse of a region with far more national brand name recognition and reputation and monster enrollment numbers.
015a 5y ago
Also, within "can still drive home every couple months to see the family" distance of UIUC and Purdue, which are two of the top ten Electrical Engineering and Computer Science universities in the US.
- zanecodes 5y ago
  And Rose-Hulman!
jeffbee 5y ago
Ohio has a lot going for it, geographically. It has major pre-war cities that contain identifiable centers. It has the same overall population density as Spain. Its major cities could easily be served by high-speed rail. It has a reliable source of fresh water. If it weren't for its across-the-board anti-government slate of elected officials, it could regain its prominence among the states.
- asdff 5y ago
  The worst thing going for Ohio is the political landscape. An effort to restart passenger rail with a line from Cleveland to Akron was killed in the early 2000s, thanks to a small township of like 2000 people that would have had to hear a passenger train in addition to the freight rail traffic currently using the rail line already in place in their back yard. Regional planning is impossible with such a selfish and fractured political foundation, not to mention the gerrymandering done by statehouse republicans that maintains this state of dysfunction and pushes the state red.
destitude 5y ago
They are extremely anti-renewable energy though. There was attempt (not sure if it passed) to make wind turbines illegal.
- ct0 5y ago
  Sounds more like they are anti turbine. Where does someone put a turbine when it's at the end of its life?
  - penneyd 5y ago
    Where does someone put a coal fired power plant when it's at the end of its life?
    - ummonk 5y ago
      Aren't coal power plants made from recyclable materials like metal and concrete rather than unrecyclable composite materials?
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    https://www.eenews.net/articles/volatile-place-new-laws-thwart-ohio-renewables/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/volatile-place-new-laws-thwa...
- hguant 5y ago
  I don't want to say so, but...so? At Intel scale, they're able to buy carbon offsets or - gasp! - install their own solar/wind in their properties. The municipal and state governments are I'm sure bending over backwards to get the plants and infrastructure investment, a permit to run whatever solar/wind/renewable they want is probably chump change for them.
  - llbeansandrice 5y ago
    I'll eat a sock if they bother with solar in Ohio. I guess it's better than nothing but large parts of Ohio just don't get that much sun. Wind is much more likely.
Animats 5y ago
amelius 5y ago
For a fab, every US location is probably better than Taiwan. That's to say: it probably doesn't matter that much where they put it.
- tracker1 5y ago
  I'm somewhat concerned for Taiwan though... At least having a headstart on chip production gives them some cover from those who would be more likely to step in as China makes strides towards potential invasion. Could make HK look like a beach party.
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    The chip progress by TSMC was made possible by ASML from The Netherlands that supplied them with ultraviolet lithography machines. Those are real example of techno magic with ASML solving many really hard issues much sooner then was expected. Surely TSMC advanced the process itself, but Samsung and Intel are not that far behind. But all of 3 use ASML technology and it is not allowed to be exported to China or Russia for that matter. Attacking Taiwan will make a prospect of getting that for China even more unlikely.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      People don't know this but ASML litho machines are also made in USA - at the Wilson factory in Connecticut: https://www.asml.com/en/careers/working-at-asml/united-states/careers-at-wilton-factory https://www.asml.com/en/careers/working-at-asml/united-state... Here is a tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El8-Kqv6vLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El8-Kqv6vLE ASML also has a huge R&D campus in San Diego doing cutting edge lithography research. I applied for a job there a couple of years ago.
nebula8804 5y ago
A smaller but still important metric....the possibility of turning it permanently blue? (one can hope)
- taylortrusty 5y ago
  I suspect part of the appeal is it's not permanently blue.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    People always complain about the downsides of all these blue areas but at the end of the day there is still a massive population that continue to live there. For example: Exodus from California is mainly limited to people making less than 100k a year. People making more than that actually increased their population in California. So this is mainly a rich vs poor issue. I'm excited at the prospect of transforming some of the rural states into a mindset of progressivism. It will help prevent some of the gridlock that is holding back the country from trying big bold ideas.
    - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
      I mean it's pretty much known that rich people can avoid nearly any consequence intended or unintended of politicians...... It's why people view the ability to ignore politics as a privilege having the resources to just avoid whatever they happen to do gives you a massive degree of freedom. Also aren't these progressive policies supposed to have helped people on the lower end of the economic scale rather then forced them out?
      - nebula8804 5y ago
        >I mean it's pretty much known that rich people can avoid nearly any consequence intended or unintended of politicians...... Its not a long term strategy when the majority suffer. Thats why the blue side have shifted towards pushing European style Democratic Socialism policies and the Red has shifted into authoritarian right style policies. >Also aren't these progressive policies supposed to have helped people on the lower end of the economic scale rather then forced them out? What progressive policies? There is no real progressive party in the US. California(and the rest of the states (save for a few districts here and there) has been extremely hostile to real progressives. What we have now on the "left" is a combination of neo-liberal right leaning centrists mixed in with fake leftist social populism.
umvi 5y ago
> extremely low cost of living and a city/region that has more good restaurants and activities than might be expected That's what people said about Salt Lake City and Boise... until about 5 years ago. Cost of living has skyrocketed since 2017, housing alone has doubled in price. It doesn't take long for a low cost of living region to become high cost of living.
- asdff 5y ago
  Cost of living in Columbus is low if you are looking at it with Coastal city eyes. That being said, its still the most expensive city in Ohio. Houses in the hot neighborhoods people write articles about were hitting 700k 6 years ago. Rents in new apartments are like $1300 for a 1 bedroom.
  - kesslern 5y ago
    > That being said, its still the most expensive city in Ohio. Yes, because it's the only major city that's growing. Cleveland, Cincinatti, Toledo, and Dayton are all losing population year-over-year while Columbus's grows.
    - asdff 5y ago
      Just remarking its not entirely cheap. You can move there and get a job that pays well, but you aren't alone, other people are going to have well paid jobs too and you will find the same competitive housing market for decent neighborhoods that you see in places like Portland or wherever. Especially when you consider how your full tax structure works it might not be as much of a deal over time as CA with prop 13 as your taxes will be reassessed every few years and if the market climbed, so did your tax bill. There's probably fewer opportunities to leg up your earned income to match in a place with less jobs and smaller network effects like Central Ohio than there is in major job centers with more options for lateral moves.
    - axxl 5y ago
      Cincinnati (double n, single t) is actually growing in population: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/08/12/census-2020-cincinnati-officially-ends-70-years-population-loss/8105461002/ https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/08/12/census-2020...
lr4444lr 5y ago
Does it have a sufficiently educated workforce, or can it convince enough of one to move there, though?
- gaoshan 5y ago
  It has Ohio State University. One of the largest Universities in the world (50,000-ish students) and one that has been rising in the rankings steadily over the last couple of decades. It's quite a decent public school today. There are over a dozen colleges and universities right in and around the city.
- MichiganHere 5y ago
  One of the reasons Amazon didn't come to Michigan was because there wasn't enough programmers. There was actually enough programmers, but they had to compete with automotive wages which are typically above 6 figures. Ohio doesn't have that industry, so it might be a way to get cheap educated labor that would otherwise move out of state.
- lacker 5y ago
  There are many smart people who grew up in the Midwest and want to stay there. A lot of Midwestern public schools have pretty good engineering programs, it's not just OSU, there's also Michigan, UIUC, Purdue. These cheap midwestern cities seem like a pretty good place to put high-tech manufacturing in the US.
- fault1 5y ago
  It's Columbus, so yes. It's also one of the fastest growing cities in the upper midwest, afaik. There are a ton of good big10 engineering schools, and columbus should be able to draw from the east coast as well, since it's a LOT less expensive (currently).
tracker1 5y ago
I think it's more about diversifying locations for labor pooling... Phoenix is growing and now going to have fabs for Intel, Samsung and TSMC. I think it's more about hedging or spreading out the labor pool a bit more and less competition. As for location, in terms of shipping, they're probably about on par to each other. Not sure how stable it is regarding weather conditions, or natural disaster risk in Ohio vs Arizona though. In either case, it's good to see some uptick in distributed manufacturing. Concentrating most high technology infrastructure into a relatively small region has proven a disaster when problems inevitably happen.
- coredog64 5y ago
  Not everyone wants to live in Arizona. Picking a location with natural greenery expands the labor pool.
  - axiolite 5y ago
    > Picking a location with natural greenery expands the labor pool. This is provably false. The US population is fleeing the areas with the most natural greenery, migrating south and west. The south western US is primarily dry desert. "As of the 2010 Census, Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the United States, with an increase of 35.1% in the last ten years. Additionally, Arizona (24.6%), Utah (23.8%), Texas (20.6%), and Colorado (16.9%) were all in the top ten fastest-growing states as well" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States#Cities_and_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States#Cit... Greenery is nice. Warm weather is also nice. Lack of things like ice storms, fog, black ice, trees falling on power lines, etc., is nice, too.

planetsprite 5y ago

However it's misguided. Cost of labor is still 10x higher than a plant with the same productivity in a relatively poorer country. American manufacturing is mostly indirect social welfare now, it's not economically efficient.

enkid 5y ago
Is cost of labor really one of the major costs of a semiconductor plant? Plants in South Korea and Taiwan are economical and they have relatively high labor costs, so I'm not sure I buy this.
- vizzier 5y ago
  This was my thought as well, chip production has to be so necessarily automated to maintain a clean state that it feels like the cost of engineers to maintain systems is always going to be high, but also a small cost of the overall system. I'd love some real numbers.
- pm90 5y ago
  The only reason it’s not in China is because they don’t have ready access to the technology that allows for this. All the “fabulous” chip makers in Asia are all US allies.
bendhoefs 5y ago
It's not like semiconductor plants are using the cheapest possible labor they can get their hands on. I imagine there are very few people working in semiconductor plants that don't have post secondary education.

jnorthrop 5y ago

Not to mention low probability of natural disasters: Earthquakes, tornados, wild fire, hurricanes, etc.

politician 5y ago
Access to large amounts of fresh water.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Half of Ohio is flat, and gets lots of storms that blow through the plains and prairies from the west, so not exactly low probability of tornadoes. Source: I grew up in central Ohio. Public schools made it a point to practice tornado drills. In addition, there was an old Cold War-era air raid siren a block from the house I grew up in that had been repurposed and tested for tornado warnings. One of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rRSY0dRIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rRSY0dRIU Edit: read about Xenia, Ohio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenia,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenia,_Ohio > Xenia has a history of severe storm activity. According to local legend, the Shawnee referred to the area as "the place of the devil wind" or "the land of the crazy winds" (depending upon the translation). > On April 3, 1974, a tornado rated F5 on the Fujita scale cut a path directly through the middle of Xenia during the 1974 Super Outbreak > Xenia was struck by an F2 tornado on April 25, 1989, and again by an F4 tornado on September 20, 2000.
- eeeeeeehio 5y ago
  Even large, damaging tornadoes have quite localized impacts (max of maybe a mile in path width) -- and you don't generally do much more than stay up to building code in order to prepare for one. In contrast, earthquakes devastate entire areas and require substantial changes to building construction in order to protect against them. The probability of a large, damaging tornado at a particular spot in Ohio is quite small compared with the risk of damaging earthquakes in other locations. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-will-occur-los-angeles-area-san-francisco-bay-area https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-probability-earthquake-will-o...

N1H1L 5y ago

The midwest has some of the greatest engineering schools in the nation. I have been beating this drum hoarse for a few years now - but it's true. Specifically, members of the Big 10 conference are probably the best engineering schools conference in the world. Within 300 miles from Columbus (where you have Ohio State - Big10), you have Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, UIUC, Indiana, Purdue from the Big 10 along with Carnegie Mellon, Case Western and Pitt. Even the state of California doesn't have so many so good tech schools.

moralestapia 5y ago
My two c, I have been left with a very good impression of people from Penn State and Michigan State, very talented and diligent at work.
rxhernandez 5y ago
I'm sure there's more great ones in California but I can count 14 off the top of my head; I think all of them are nearly within 300 miles of LA too. 1. Caltech 2. Stanford 3. Cal 4. UCLA 5. Harvey Mudd 6. USC 7. UCSD 8. UCD 9. UCSB 10. CPSLO 11. UCI 12. CPP 13. UCSC 14. UCR
- N1H1L 5y ago
  I will take Stanford and the UCs. Every other school in that list comes below the Midwestern powerhouses
- ericmay 5y ago
  Idk what we consider the “Midwest to be” but here are some schools generally in the area that are good. Happy to delete any you don’t like. No particular order. ;) 1. Northwestern 2. Notre Dame 3. Wisconsin Madison 4. Ohio State 5. Minnesota Twin Cities 6. Carnegie Mellon 7. University of Chicago 8. Purdue 9. Penn St 10. Washington University St. Louis 11. UIUC 12. Case Western 13. Michigan So there are plenty of world class educational institutions in the Midwest. Frankly I’d take this list over your list and that’s not including other brand name universities like Indiana, Pitt, Michigan State, Nebraska, or Iowa, some of which do “non-sexy” research in agricultural science and other fields. Ohio State has the only undergraduate wedding engineering program in North America even. It really is an absolute powerhouse of a region with far more national brand name recognition and reputation and monster enrollment numbers.

015a 5y ago

Also, within "can still drive home every couple months to see the family" distance of UIUC and Purdue, which are two of the top ten Electrical Engineering and Computer Science universities in the US.

zanecodes 5y ago
And Rose-Hulman!

jeffbee 5y ago

Ohio has a lot going for it, geographically. It has major pre-war cities that contain identifiable centers. It has the same overall population density as Spain. Its major cities could easily be served by high-speed rail. It has a reliable source of fresh water. If it weren't for its across-the-board anti-government slate of elected officials, it could regain its prominence among the states.

asdff 5y ago
The worst thing going for Ohio is the political landscape. An effort to restart passenger rail with a line from Cleveland to Akron was killed in the early 2000s, thanks to a small township of like 2000 people that would have had to hear a passenger train in addition to the freight rail traffic currently using the rail line already in place in their back yard. Regional planning is impossible with such a selfish and fractured political foundation, not to mention the gerrymandering done by statehouse republicans that maintains this state of dysfunction and pushes the state red.

destitude 5y ago

They are extremely anti-renewable energy though. There was attempt (not sure if it passed) to make wind turbines illegal.

ct0 5y ago
Sounds more like they are anti turbine. Where does someone put a turbine when it's at the end of its life?
- penneyd 5y ago
  Where does someone put a coal fired power plant when it's at the end of its life?
  - ummonk 5y ago
    Aren't coal power plants made from recyclable materials like metal and concrete rather than unrecyclable composite materials?
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  https://www.eenews.net/articles/volatile-place-new-laws-thwart-ohio-renewables/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/volatile-place-new-laws-thwa...
hguant 5y ago
I don't want to say so, but...so? At Intel scale, they're able to buy carbon offsets or - gasp! - install their own solar/wind in their properties. The municipal and state governments are I'm sure bending over backwards to get the plants and infrastructure investment, a permit to run whatever solar/wind/renewable they want is probably chump change for them.
- llbeansandrice 5y ago
  I'll eat a sock if they bother with solar in Ohio. I guess it's better than nothing but large parts of Ohio just don't get that much sun. Wind is much more likely.

Animats 5y ago

amelius 5y ago

For a fab, every US location is probably better than Taiwan. That's to say: it probably doesn't matter that much where they put it.

tracker1 5y ago
I'm somewhat concerned for Taiwan though... At least having a headstart on chip production gives them some cover from those who would be more likely to step in as China makes strides towards potential invasion. Could make HK look like a beach party.
- _0w8t 5y ago
  The chip progress by TSMC was made possible by ASML from The Netherlands that supplied them with ultraviolet lithography machines. Those are real example of techno magic with ASML solving many really hard issues much sooner then was expected. Surely TSMC advanced the process itself, but Samsung and Intel are not that far behind. But all of 3 use ASML technology and it is not allowed to be exported to China or Russia for that matter. Attacking Taiwan will make a prospect of getting that for China even more unlikely.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    People don't know this but ASML litho machines are also made in USA - at the Wilson factory in Connecticut: https://www.asml.com/en/careers/working-at-asml/united-states/careers-at-wilton-factory https://www.asml.com/en/careers/working-at-asml/united-state... Here is a tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El8-Kqv6vLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El8-Kqv6vLE ASML also has a huge R&D campus in San Diego doing cutting edge lithography research. I applied for a job there a couple of years ago.

nebula8804 5y ago

A smaller but still important metric....the possibility of turning it permanently blue? (one can hope)

taylortrusty 5y ago
I suspect part of the appeal is it's not permanently blue.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  People always complain about the downsides of all these blue areas but at the end of the day there is still a massive population that continue to live there. For example: Exodus from California is mainly limited to people making less than 100k a year. People making more than that actually increased their population in California. So this is mainly a rich vs poor issue. I'm excited at the prospect of transforming some of the rural states into a mindset of progressivism. It will help prevent some of the gridlock that is holding back the country from trying big bold ideas.
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    I mean it's pretty much known that rich people can avoid nearly any consequence intended or unintended of politicians...... It's why people view the ability to ignore politics as a privilege having the resources to just avoid whatever they happen to do gives you a massive degree of freedom. Also aren't these progressive policies supposed to have helped people on the lower end of the economic scale rather then forced them out?
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      >I mean it's pretty much known that rich people can avoid nearly any consequence intended or unintended of politicians...... Its not a long term strategy when the majority suffer. Thats why the blue side have shifted towards pushing European style Democratic Socialism policies and the Red has shifted into authoritarian right style policies. >Also aren't these progressive policies supposed to have helped people on the lower end of the economic scale rather then forced them out? What progressive policies? There is no real progressive party in the US. California(and the rest of the states (save for a few districts here and there) has been extremely hostile to real progressives. What we have now on the "left" is a combination of neo-liberal right leaning centrists mixed in with fake leftist social populism.

umvi 5y ago

> extremely low cost of living and a city/region that has more good restaurants and activities than might be expected That's what people said about Salt Lake City and Boise... until about 5 years ago. Cost of living has skyrocketed since 2017, housing alone has doubled in price. It doesn't take long for a low cost of living region to become high cost of living.

asdff 5y ago
Cost of living in Columbus is low if you are looking at it with Coastal city eyes. That being said, its still the most expensive city in Ohio. Houses in the hot neighborhoods people write articles about were hitting 700k 6 years ago. Rents in new apartments are like $1300 for a 1 bedroom.
- kesslern 5y ago
  > That being said, its still the most expensive city in Ohio. Yes, because it's the only major city that's growing. Cleveland, Cincinatti, Toledo, and Dayton are all losing population year-over-year while Columbus's grows.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Just remarking its not entirely cheap. You can move there and get a job that pays well, but you aren't alone, other people are going to have well paid jobs too and you will find the same competitive housing market for decent neighborhoods that you see in places like Portland or wherever. Especially when you consider how your full tax structure works it might not be as much of a deal over time as CA with prop 13 as your taxes will be reassessed every few years and if the market climbed, so did your tax bill. There's probably fewer opportunities to leg up your earned income to match in a place with less jobs and smaller network effects like Central Ohio than there is in major job centers with more options for lateral moves.
  - axxl 5y ago
    Cincinnati (double n, single t) is actually growing in population: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/08/12/census-2020-cincinnati-officially-ends-70-years-population-loss/8105461002/ https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/08/12/census-2020...

lr4444lr 5y ago

Does it have a sufficiently educated workforce, or can it convince enough of one to move there, though?

gaoshan 5y ago
It has Ohio State University. One of the largest Universities in the world (50,000-ish students) and one that has been rising in the rankings steadily over the last couple of decades. It's quite a decent public school today. There are over a dozen colleges and universities right in and around the city.
MichiganHere 5y ago
One of the reasons Amazon didn't come to Michigan was because there wasn't enough programmers. There was actually enough programmers, but they had to compete with automotive wages which are typically above 6 figures. Ohio doesn't have that industry, so it might be a way to get cheap educated labor that would otherwise move out of state.
lacker 5y ago
There are many smart people who grew up in the Midwest and want to stay there. A lot of Midwestern public schools have pretty good engineering programs, it's not just OSU, there's also Michigan, UIUC, Purdue. These cheap midwestern cities seem like a pretty good place to put high-tech manufacturing in the US.
fault1 5y ago
It's Columbus, so yes. It's also one of the fastest growing cities in the upper midwest, afaik. There are a ton of good big10 engineering schools, and columbus should be able to draw from the east coast as well, since it's a LOT less expensive (currently).

tracker1 5y ago

I think it's more about diversifying locations for labor pooling... Phoenix is growing and now going to have fabs for Intel, Samsung and TSMC. I think it's more about hedging or spreading out the labor pool a bit more and less competition. As for location, in terms of shipping, they're probably about on par to each other. Not sure how stable it is regarding weather conditions, or natural disaster risk in Ohio vs Arizona though. In either case, it's good to see some uptick in distributed manufacturing. Concentrating most high technology infrastructure into a relatively small region has proven a disaster when problems inevitably happen.

coredog64 5y ago
Not everyone wants to live in Arizona. Picking a location with natural greenery expands the labor pool.
- axiolite 5y ago
  > Picking a location with natural greenery expands the labor pool. This is provably false. The US population is fleeing the areas with the most natural greenery, migrating south and west. The south western US is primarily dry desert. "As of the 2010 Census, Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the United States, with an increase of 35.1% in the last ten years. Additionally, Arizona (24.6%), Utah (23.8%), Texas (20.6%), and Colorado (16.9%) were all in the top ten fastest-growing states as well" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States#Cities_and_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States#Cit... Greenery is nice. Warm weather is also nice. Lack of things like ice storms, fog, black ice, trees falling on power lines, etc., is nice, too.