Executives from foreign-owned companies will gather with local economic-development officials in Denver on Tuesday to discuss ways to reverse the long-term decline of international investment in the state.
“For the U.S. to maintain its competitiveness, it needs to attract more foreign direct investment,” said Jason Morin, vice president of environmental and government affairs for Holcim US, a subsidiary of a Swiss supplier of cement and aggregates.
U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies directly employed 79,000 people in the state, or 2.5 percent of the total, in 2009, the most recent year available, according to , an accounting and consulting firm. That is down from 88,200 direct jobs, or 3 percent of the total, in 2000. The tally at that time excluded finance-related jobs, which were included starting in 2006.
A decade ago, the U.S. attracted about 40 percent of global investment dollars, a share that has fallen to about 17 percent, said Nancy McLernon, president and chief executive of the Organization for International Investment.
Many of those investment dollars went to faster-growing emerging markets. Even then, the U.S. stands out among developed countries for the share of foreign direct investment it has lost, McLernon said.
Green energy companies based abroad have targeted the state for investment, including SMA Solar Technology, a German maker of solar inverters that has two plants in Denver.
“Denver has received a renewed focus in foreign investment over the past few years,” said Paul Washington, Denver’s economic-development director, among the participants in the meeting.
Besides providing outside expertise, especially in manufacturing, foreign companies tend to pay more. That acts as a counterweight to outsourcing by domestic companies that send jobs overseas so they can pay lower wages. Foreign-owned subsidiaries paid an average annual wage of $60,700 in Colorado in 2009, nearly 17 percent more than the state average of $52,000.
When suppliers and the secondary jobs that result from employee spending are added in, about 313,200 Colorado jobs, or 10 percent of the total, were linked to foreign investment, the PwC study estimates.
Where foreign money is
How employment by foreign companies breaks down in Colorado:
Manufacturing 36%
Wholesale and retail trade 15%
Finance and real estate 9%
Information 8%
Professional and scientific 4%
Other 28%
Source: Organization for International Investment
