We'll take a little more of the kind of news Johnston County got last week, with an announcement that Caterpillar, the heavy equipment company that employs 2,000 workers in North Carolina, will be adding 199 jobs at its Clayton manufacturing plant. The announcement came just after unemployment figures had been released showing an uptick in the Triangle's rate, to 8.3 percent in December as opposed to 8.1 percent in November.
Caterpillar is doing great business after a period when sales dropped off, and it picked the Johnston site for expansion over a number of other choices, foreign and domestic. The company has a substantial presence in Sanford and Winston-Salem. Financial incentives, conditional on goals, are part of the bargain, but this Illinois-based firm has a good track record.
In any economy, but particularly in this one, 199 good-paying jobs is big news, meaning work for that number of people, help for their families and a positive impact on merchants and service providers.
