A first for Michigan’s $2.4B SOAR business incentive program: New jobs
(ASSOCIATED PRESS) – Associated Press reports that Michigan’s embattled $2.4 billion business incentive program has spurred controversy, but last year it began generating something new: Jobs.
Reports submitted to the state for the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve (SOAR) Fund show that 1,846 jobs were created in 2025 among 10 companies awarded a collective $1.74 billion in large taxpayer subsidies.
That’s less than 13% of the 14,559 new jobs various firms promised to create over the course of several years under SOAR agreements with the Michigan Economic Development Corp.
But the new jobs represent the first hiring under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s flagship corporate incentive program since it launched in 2022 following bipartisan support in the state Legislature.
Dow Inc. also retained 5,028 jobs, staying on pace to keep at least 5,000 jobs in Michigan through 2032 in exchange for a $120 million grant to modernize two Midland-area facilities.
Including Dow, companies awarded SOAR subsidies have promised to create or retain a total of 19,599 jobs.
The new hiring didn’t stop lawmakers from defunding SOAR for this budget year. Republicans and some Democrats are scrutinizing taxpayer subsidies after years of questioning whether the billions spent are worth it.
“Large checks are not necessarily going to fix everything,” Rep. Jasper Martus, D-Flushing, said of how views on economic development policy have changed.
But MEDC spokesperson Danielle Emerson counters that the scale of the investment reflects the scope of the massive SOAR projects. Hiring, she said, was always expected to take years.
“We have every confidence it will continue to happen,” Emerson told Bridge Michigan. “These are good-paying jobs with important economic impacts to the communities they are in.”
That’s the case in Saginaw County’s Richland Township, where Corning subsidiary Solar Technology LLC is finishing its 1-million-square-foot factory close to Hemlock Semiconductor, another Corning-related company.
Solar Technology received a $68 million award through SOAR, plus another $29 million earmarked for utility upgrades to support its new solar energy component factory. The firm was expected to create 1,151 new jobs. So far, it has added 1,244, about 100 more than promised, at an average pay of $55,223.
A company spokesperson told Bridge the SOAR grant helped the firm hire ahead of schedule.
Work on the factory involved a “long haul” of at least three years, Township Manager Rob Grose told Bridge. But so far, Grose added, results show “it’s been a great asset to the community.”
The data
Bridge Michigan tallied the SOAR results from years of MEDC reports, the most recent coming in March and reflecting the latest available data. This report also uses documents received through Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.
Records for SOAR show:
1. The state has awarded companies a combined $1.86 billion, including direct payments and related site improvement. It has so far spent $1 billion of that.
2. Another $660 million was awarded to economic development groups for site readiness without a specific company in mind. That includes $259 million to create a speculative megasite near Flint.
3. Companies promised a combined 19,599 new or retained jobs in exchange for the subsidies.
4. So far, various firms have created 1,846 jobs. Dow also retained 5,028 jobs, bringing the year’s total to 6,874 new or retained jobs
5. The awards were initially projected to spur $18.7 billion in corporate investments in Michigan, a figure reduced to $10.7 billion after companies changed plans. Among them: A $3.5 billion drop in expected spending by General Motors and LG Energy Solution.
Hiring to date reflects a cost per new job of about $795,000 based on still-active job-creation incentive awards and recent company reports to the state. If all jobs are realized from the active projects, that cost will drop to about $160,000 per new job.
Those figures don’t include non-SOAR subsidies that may have also been awarded to projects, such as tax breaks.
Since the SOAR awards launched in January 2022, many of the deals changed as the incentive program evolved in a volatile business and federal policy climate. Electric vehicles, for example, were much of the original focus, but automaker shifts in production plans slowed plans.
“We remain encouraged by the hiring activity across projects even as so much has changed at the national and international levels since the SOAR fund was first created,” the MEDC’s Emerson said.
Ford Motor Co. did not pursue its first SOAR award, made in part to support electrification upgrades across several factories. The company also put its $3.5 billion battery factory in Marshall on hold for some time before downsizing.
Now it expects a $2.5 billion investment and 1,700 hires there. The company’s SOAR awards were reduced by about $70 million to $326.3 million.
Last year’s hiring counted 146 new workers at the Ford BlueOval Michigan factory, where the automaker now plans to use some of the new EV battery capacity to produce energy storage systems. Most of the hires are administrative, the company told the state.
The factory on 500 acres will open this year, Ford has said, and hiring continues. Among open positions are jobs ranging from security guard to several manufacturing engineers. Average pay so far, Ford reported to the state, is $75,000 per year.
More than 70% of the new workers come from Marshall as well as nearby Albion and Battle Creek, Ford said in a recent newsletter.
The company “is proud to hire team members from the communities surrounding the site,” Ford said in a statement in early March.
Jobs expected to increase
A 2.8-million-square-foot LG Energy battery factory near Lansing is among SOAR-funded projects where hiring is expected to increase. The new factory was part of the first large-scale state incentive in 2022, when it was part of an Ultium Cells EV battery partnership between LG and General Motors.
GM sold the battery factory to its partner, and the state transferred the $120 million cash SOAR award to LG. The battery-maker, in turn, shifted production from EV batteries to energy storage systems.
In March, LG announced a $4.3 billion contract with Tesla. The company has reported hiring 408 of the SOAR-required 1,360 workers, with regular production planned to start this quarter.
GM also promises eventual hiring after it again retools its Orion Assembly factory in Oakland County. The site had been planned for EVs but now will produce gas-fueled trucks and SUVs.
GM has started an “initial wave of onboarding,” it told the state last fall. It forecasts about 1,500 workers in the factory by year-end as production starts in the first quarter of 2027. The company received $480 million from SOAR.
Our Next Energy in Van Buren Township pivoted from EV batteries to energy storage systems. The company did not respond to Bridge’s request for comment, but it told the state it is “actively servicing the defense sector.”
The company — which received $70 million of $200 million promised through SOAR — reported 48 hires so far. Its promised target is 2,112 by the end of 2029.
However, Our Next Energy also laid off 29 workers at its Oakland County headquarters and is no longer planning to use about two-thirds of its 659,589-square-foot battery gigafactory. The state has said the SOAR funding has been paused as the company repositions its business.
No jobs yet
Several other projects, including the canceled Ford plan, have not moved toward delivering jobs to the state.
Detroit Diesel received a $27.7 million award to add 436 jobs at its factory in Redford Township and Detroit. Its contract was signed in December, according to the MEDC, so it is not yet part of the annual fiscal year reporting.
Gotion Inc. was awarded $175 million through SOAR, but the state canceled the agreement — and seeks the return of $50 million that was disbursed — last fall after it said the company fell into default by not making progress on its EV battery factory near Big Rapids.
Two other projects remain approved but unfunded: Highland Copper’s $50 million award for a copper mine in the Upper Peninsula has not made it through appropriations committees, though the company says it is still pursuing funding. Efforts by some lawmakers to arrange other funding for the controversial funding did not work last fall.
The University of Michigan has not finalized its contract worth $100 million. However, it still plans a controversial $1.2 billion data center for research in Ypsilanti Township, officials told Bridge in March.
U-M, Gotion and the canceled Ford project account for about 5,900 promised jobs — about 30% of the expected hiring from all company-specific SOAR deals. They also represent $5.1 billion expected from company investments.
Looking ahead
About $651 million in SOAR funding remained available to the state from $2.4 billion in budget authorizations, according to the House Fiscal Agency in January.
Dissatisfaction with Michigan high-dollar economic development subsidies has escalated since 2022 among Democrats and Republicans, culminating in lawmakers eliminating it from this year’s budget.
Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, is calling to repeal SOAR so that it can’t be revived in the future.
Whitmer already seeks another $150 million in site-readiness SOAR money through her supplemental budget request from February. Of that, $100 million would be for an undetermined company.
But public backlash to many of the projects — including litigation over zoning in both Marshall and near Big Rapids — keeps the Legislature cautious about further support.
“I think the people of Michigan are starting to become more and more fed up with these failed economic decisions,” Rep. Steve Carra, R-Three Rivers, told Bridge. Lawmakers, too, are “more averse to them than I’ve ever seen.”
Job creation is only one part of what the state should demand in accountability, Rep. Brian BeGole, R-Perry, told Bridge.
“The promises made and the promises not kept” are an issue, he said, raising concerns about GM selling its share of the battery factory to LG while not returning the state’s $120 million. Another concern is that Attorney General Dana Nessel is seeking a reimbursement from Gotion, which is challenging the state for cutting off its project.
But Emerson, of the MEDC, said the state is starting to realize the benefits from the massive awards that she described as “transformational.”
“There is so much more to these multi-year projects than just the hiring at the facility,” she said, mentioning local business hiring and construction costs.
“These projects were never about instant results, rather anchoring investments that will deliver opportunity for decades to come.”
