FACT SHEET: Picking Losers: Majority of all state incentive projects end in failure

February 2015

If North Carolina continues to use incentives to pick winners and losers in economic development, the state needs to do a much better job of picking winners. More than half of all firms receiving incentive awards from the state’s Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) program since its inception in 2002 have failed to live up to their promises of job creation, investment, or wages. These failed projects have forced the Department of Commerce to cancel those grants and even occasionally take back funds that had already been given these non-performing firms. Given the troubling number of failed projects, now is not the time to accept the Governor’s proposal to expand JDIG and create a new “catalyst fund” for closing new incentive deals.