Case Study in Refusal to Accept and Fully Report Positive Business News (Intel’s New Plant and New Jobs in AZ & NM)

Intel is building a new chip plant in Arizona, and taking another building out of mothballs in New Mexico.

USA Today, specifically Michelle Kessler, treats it like a narrowly-averted disaster instead of impressive news (bold is mine; my heckling is in italics):

Not all high-tech manufacturing is leaving the USA. (Who said it was?)

No. 1 chipmaker Intel (INTC) on Monday announced plans to build a cutting-edge semiconductor plant in Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix. The plant, which will cost $3 billion, will employ about 1,000 workers when completed in 2007.

Intel also said it would spend $105 million to revamp an old factory in New Mexico that is now idle. About 300 jobs will be created there.

Other tech firms are building U.S. plants, too. (Wait, I thought Intel was the exception, and that everyone else was leaving.) No. 1 PC maker Dell (DELL) recently broke ground on a giant factory in Winston-Salem, N.C. Computer memory-maker Infineon Technologies (IFX) expanded its Richmond, Va., plant last year. And giant IBM (IBM) opened a huge chipmaking plant in East Fishkill, N.Y., in 2002.

That may seem counterintuitive as the tech industry becomes increasingly global. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group, estimates that two-thirds of the newest kind of chip factories will be built in Asia. (Duh, that’s where two-thirds of the world’s people and the fastest-growing emerging economies are.) Tech companies, including Motorola (MOT), Nokia (NOK) and Google (GOOG), have recently opened new facilities there.

But Intel Senior Vice President Robert Baker says the USA is the best place for Intel’s new plant. “Arizona offers some unique advantages,” he told reporters.

I had to go to Reuters (of all places) to pick up this quite-relevant contextual fact:

The Chandler plant will hire 1,000 high-skilled, permanent workers. Intel will employ a total 10,000 staff in Chandler after the third facility is built. (Imagine. That’s 9,000 other high-tech (largely) manufacturing jobs that haven’t “left the USA.” Nothing like leaving out things that blow up your basic premise, Michelle. Zheesh.)

You might also think from reading Ms. Kessler’s piece that there won’t be any meaningful economic impact from the plant until 2007. Au contraire. But I had to go to The Arizona Republic (link probably requires registration) to pick up this relevant economic fact that shows that the good news starts NOW:

Construction, which will start Aug. 2, will create about 3,000 jobs.

Most of the rest of the USAT article brings up an issue that I’ve been bothered about for some time, and that I intend to deal with at another time, namely tax subsidies and breaks for new manufacturing and jobs (or to keep jobs in place when plants threaten to shut down), which (obviously) are given at the long-term expense of other businesses and the taxpaying public in general.

But the bottom line at this post is that high-tech jobs are staying here, growing here, and providing meaningful immediate benefit, even when the lead times to build are long. Too bad I had to go to three different places to get the full story.
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UPDATE: To get to the Reuters info, I had to endure this snarky sentence: “Political leaders around the world have a history of pre-announcing Intel factory investments that often turn out to be either premature or misguided. First, I don’t recall reading statements like this in 1990s business coverage when Intel actually completed and then had to mothball plants because of volatile chip prices, and second, I see this as a subtle hint to the reader to discount the good news, because it may not come to pass (again, something I don’t recall seeing in 1990s coverage).

UPDATE 2: Welcome to Don Luskin’s poorandstupid.com readers, who thanks to Mr. Luskin are anything but.