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The number 11,000 came up in reference last week to two major Cincinnati-area employers.
First, General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said that number Monday, March 16, during a hometown speech. After the industrial multinational conglomerate opens its new $90 million U.S. Global Operations Center in downtown Cincinnati — construction is underway at The Banks riverfront development now — GE will have about 11,000 employees in southwest Ohio.
“We’re going to have 11,000 GE employees in this part of the state, more than any place anywhere in the world,” Immelt told the audience at the annual awards luncheon of the University of Cincinnati Economics Center.
Ohio will have a higher concentration of GE employees than its headquarters state of Connecticut or the 175 countries or so where it does business across the globe.
“Typically there’s at least an 8 to 1 multiplier. For every GE job, there’s 8 in the community we support,” Immelt said.
The number of workers include those being hired for the operations center; the Evendale headquarters of the GE Aviation division and its surrounding offices, testing and manufacturing sites for jet engines such as West Chester Twp. and Peebles; and GE Capital offices.
Also this past week, the figure 11,000 came up when The Procter & Gamble Co. announced plans with the city of Mason to build a new $300 million Beauty Innovation Center at the consumer goods giant's existing Mason Business Center campus. The research center will move operations to Mason from Blue Ash when construction is finished.
Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, over a multi-year period, is reducing nonmanufacturing employment by 16 percent to 22 percent companywide and could reach that goal to lower headcount this year, according to our news partner WCPO 9 On Your Side. Job cuts affect positions in Cincinnati. And P&G spokesman Bryan McCleary told the Journal-News this week that the most recent information available about the company’s number of employees across the Cincinnati metropolitan was about 11,000.
If GE continues to add jobs in the region, it could surpass that 11,000 job count and outgrow P&G’s presence.
GE is already Ohio’s largest manufacturing employer when including the GE Lighting division in greater Cleveland, and the state’s 12th largest employer overall, according to Ohio Development Services Agency. As of 2014 data, Procter & Gamble was Ohio’s 17th largest employer, also according to the state development department’s research. Ohio’s largest employer is Walmart, state records show.
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