How a quiet regulatory reform is being credited with generating 600 Virginia jobs

Legislation last year clearing the way for people to work in Virginia with occupational licenses from other states — credentials like those for barbers, land surveyors and contractors — has brought nearly 600 people to work in Virginia, Youngkin told a gathering of some 250 workforce development and education officials in Henrico County on Thursday.

“We work really hard for a company to come announce they’re going to hire 5 or 600 people,” Youngkin said. “How about this commonsense legislation that unleashes opportunity, gets bureaucracy out of the way, recognizes the value of an individual and says, ‘Come work’?”

Later, he told reporters he expects to propose legislation to expand the program beyond the 85 occupations it now covers.

“It’ll be a very robust program,” he said.

So far, he said, the program has had a big impact filling jobs where employers find it can be hard to hire staff.

“This has moved very quickly. … We really haven’t spent a whole of time advertising this. We’ve just made it available to people. And so it’s a great opportunity for us, particularly in a lot of hard-to-hire areas,” he said.

Youngkin told the officials gathered at the Advanced Career Education Center at Hermitage High School that Virginia is moving to a more proactive effort on economic development.

“We need to be looking around the corner,” he said.

Later, he said an example of that is the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s push to identify business sectors to target.

With that, the partnership has been able to create pitches that can fast-track businesses’ decisions about locating facilities by highlighting what Virginia can offer with Virginians’ current talents, with training programs, energy supply and transportation.

That has already paid off with the Danish firm Topsoe’s announcement this spring that it will hire 150 and invest $400 million to build a plant at Chesterfield County’s Meadowville Technology Park. It will make a new kind of hydrogen fuel cell, one that the company says can generate clean energy for fossil-fuel users such as steel mills and shipping companies that cannot simply electrify operations and that generate nearly a third of the world’s greenhouse gases.

A more proactive targeting effort also convinced the Norwegian aerospace firm Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace Inc. to set up a plant to make and maintain missiles in James City County, a $71 million investment that will create more than 180 jobs.

“The Virginia playbook is working, and that just means we need to run the play faster and bigger and bolder so that more people can participate,” Youngkin said.