How Florida Landed Johnson & Johnson and the Promise of 500 New Jobs
October 24, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
TAMPA – After 14 months of waiting, Johnson & Johnson opened its new $23.5 million North American Global Services Center headquarters in Tampa—a facility that is expected to bring 500 new jobs to the coastal city.
The 500 jobs are expected to be filled by 2020 and have an average salary of $75,000. The site’s opening enjoyed the customary pomp and circumstances, including speeches from Gov. Rick Scott as well as J&J executives. The real meat though of why J&J opted to open the new facility in Florida came out in an interview Erin Champlin, vice president of Johnson & Johnson Global Services, gave to the Tampa Bay Times. Champlin and the Times discussed a number of nuts and bolts issues, including government incentives used to bring the facility to Tampa, as well as hiring prospects.
For the large-scale hiring J&J plans for the site, Champlin said the global health care company was confident it could find the caliber of employees it needs in the Gulf Coast area. Based on a recent recruiting event held in the area, Champlin said the company was confident it could find the right talent—both experienced industry folks, as well as people fresh out of college. So far, Champlin said Johnson and Johnson has filled 250 people to fill half the 500 positions.
“And we found that the education levels, the interest in careers in finance, human resources, operations and technology was absolutely here. The interest in working for a company like Johnson & Johnson, which gives back so much to the community, was really a pull,” Champlin said, according to the Times.
Champlin also addressed the $6.4 million state and local incentive package that sealed the deal for the J&J facility—incentives that are running into increasing opposition in the Florida legislature. Champlin told the Times that the incentive package was an important factor in luring the company to the area. She said the company was looking for a place that was economically stable and the incentive package made the area attractive. It also helps that the company has several operations located across Florida, including Viskaton, the company’s vision care division, which announced in July 2015 that it will expand its Jacksonville, Fla. site, adding an additional 100 jobs. The Jacksonville site currently employs about 2,000 people. Additionally, J&J has offices in South Florida that manage its medical and surgical device businesses as well as Latin American business.
“The state has been good to us, so we wanted to leverage that infrastructure,” Champlin told the Times. The availability of talent for hiring coupled with the economic incentives were important in bringing the company to Tampa, Champlin said.
J&J is certainly not the only pharma company to call Tampa home. Rival Bristol-Myers Squibb established the 70,000 square foot North America Capability Center in 2014. The BMS facility expects to employ 579 by 2017. The company’s Tampa site will provide technology, marketing, and business and finance support to the firm's pharmaceutical products.