Database Reveals Big-Business Dominance of Job Subsidies

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments throughout the United States have gone to just 965 large corporations. Some of these big recipients, such as Boeing (at more than $13 billion) are well known for aggressively seeking tax breaks by pitting states against each other for jobs. Sixteen other companies have received awards totaling more than $1 billion.

These are the key findings in Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent, a report published today by Good Jobs First summarizing information brought to light by an extensive enhancement of GJF's Subsidy Tracker database.

Good Jobs First is a non-profit, non-partisan research center in Washington, DC focusing on economic development accountability. The report and the database can be found at www.goodjobsfirst.org.

"Subsidy Tracker can now demonstrate that a dominant share of the subsidies awarded by state and local governments is ending up in the hands of a limited group of companies which can be regarded as the Corporate One Percent," said Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, who created the original database and the newly released version 2.0.

Subsidy Tracker now contains parent-subsidiary linkages for more than 25,000 entries with aggregate values of $110 billion, or 75 percent of the total dollar value of all the entries in the Tracker universe. Those entries have been connected to 965 parent companies drawn from the Fortune 500, the Forbes list of the largest private companies and similar lists. The Fortune 500 alone account for more than 16,000 awards worth $63 billion, or about 43 percent of total Tracker dollars.

"In our Megadeals study last year, we found that since 2008, there has been a spike in the number and cost of gold-plated deals, even though overall deal flow remains depressed," said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. "It looks like the corporate rich are getting richer at the expense of public goods that benefit all employers."

Subsidy Tracker 2.0 shows which companies have received the most cumulative awards, both in dollar terms and numbers of awards. After Boeing, the others at the top of the list are: Alcoa ($5.6 billion), Intel ($3.9 billion), General Motors ($3.5 billion) and Ford Motor ($2.5 billion). A total of 182 companies have received awards of $100 million or more. 

Contact: Phil Mattera 202-232-1616 x212

SOURCE Good Jobs First