Gold & Silver Shovel Awards

Though there aren’t any deals related to EVs on the top projects list from Silver Shovel honoree Texas, there’s plenty of growth tied to semiconductors, resources, and petrochemicals. The community of Sherman’s economic future is ensured by the massive Texas Instruments $29 billion deal that will create 3,000 jobs, a Manufacturing Project of the Year, along with a $5 billion, 1,500-job GlobiTech expansion.

A promising resources-related development is in Amarillo, where CVRM (Texas) Inc. is dropping $1.5 billion into critical mineral refining and planning to hire a thousand people in early phases, then more than double the payroll in future phases. Meanwhile, though the job counts are lower, the investments are also impressive in Gregory, Texas, where Cheniere Energy is spending $8 billion to expand its LNG plant, and in Beaumont, where OCI is spending a billion dollars on an ammonia plant.

Of course, the economies of these three Silver Shovel states, which large populations, are driven by much more than just EVs, chips, and chemicals. There’s food, for example. Jack Link’s will be hiring as many as 800 people to make beef jerky in Perry, Georgia. Tropicale Foods will be making the frozen treat known as paleta in Lubbock, Texas, with a plan to hire 500 people. Meanwhile, a Greece-based maker of natural snack foods, Unismack, is on the way to Kentwood, Michigan.

Then there are the thousand aerospace jobs on the way at Archer Aviation in Covington, Georgia, and 400 at Killdeer Mountain Manufacturing in Kerrville, Texas. Also, in Texas, TIAA plans 2,000 financial services jobs in Frisco, while CelLink Corp. has a similar number of electronics jobs on the way in Georgetown. And Norma Precision Ammunition is moving its U.S. headquarters, manufacturing, and distribution to Georgia, where it will create 600 jobs.