Infosys exits North Carolina project that promised 2,000 tech jobs in Wake County
In 2017, Wake County celebrated major job news. That July, the India-based tech consulting and staffing firm Infosys Ltd. committed to hire 2,000 people over the next five years at a new office in Raleigh. Facilitating these jobs was a state job development investment grant worth up to $22.4 million in payroll tax benefits.
On Tuesday, the North Carolina Economic Investment Committee terminated Infosys’ incentive deal, 11 days after the company informed state officials it would not achieve its local jobs target.
“We have made significant progress in hiring hundreds of new technology workers across North Carolina since we opened our Technology and Innovation Hub in 2018,” Infosys executive vice president Anant Adya informed the state committee in a Dec. 6 letter.
According to state records, Infosys has created 562 jobs in Wake County through its 2017 grant while retaining 1,162 jobs statewide. To date, North Carolina has not distributed any grant payments as the company only reached 35% of its hiring requirement.
To comply with its grant, Infosys had to create at least 1,600 jobs (with 2,000 being its target). Though the company’s initial hiring timeline was five years, North Carolina gave Infosys a two-year extension during the pandemic that stretched its compliance date through 2024.
In his letter, Adya cited the uptick in new hires working from home and outside of North Carolina.
“Although we have increased the number of employees assigned to North Carolina-based projects, not all reside in the State,” he wrote. “The mobility impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and changes in working patterns, have adversely impacted Infosys’s ability to meet the criteria agreed.”
Adya said Infosys “remains committed to North Carolina,” where his IT firm has more than 1,800 employees. Raleigh is one of six featured U.S. locations Infosys lists online, and the IT firm has invested $8.1 million to build in Wake County, state records show.
Its local office is on Brier Creek Parkway in Northwest Raleigh, near the airport and Research Triangle Park. On its website, the company says it opened this center “as part of our commitment to hire American workers.”
Infosys is annually among the largest recipients of H-1B visas, a high-skilled visa often used by U.S. employers to find tech workers from India. In early 2017, company officials said they planned to hire 10,000 people in the U.S., an announcement some saw as connected to the Trump administration’s push to restrict H1-Bs.
With its exit, Infosys joins a list of scuttled white-collar jobs projects North Carolina supported in the late 2010s, including AllState and LendingTree in Charlotte and Trilliant, LendingTree and Citrix in the Triangle. Many of these companies mentioned the pandemic-era shift toward remote work when explaining why they wouldn’t hit their hiring or investment targets.
Most job development investment grants, or JDIGs, historically haven’t met their original job targets. Since the job grant program started in 2003, early-terminated grants have outnumber completed grants by more than 3-to-1. An N&O analysis found that the majority of awarded JDIGs eventually ended prematurely in every year between 2003 and 2015, except for one.
This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 5:13 PM.
