Fairfield County has the highest concentration of people working for foreign-owned businesses in the nation, according to a report released by Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.
The study compared the number of foreign-owned jobs across the 100 largest metro areas in the United States.
The Bridgeport metro area, which comprised all of Fairfield County in the study, had the densest population of jobs in foreign-owned companies, with firms in the area such as Boehringer Ingelheim group and Diageo.
Devashree Saha, Brookings senior policy analyst and associated fellow, said in a CTPost article: “The significance of foreign direct investment to Bridgeport’s private sector employment is huge.”
She added that foreign-owned businesses generally produce jobs with high salaries.
“This report will help guide federal, state and local policymakers in designing policies that cultivate an environment that draws foreign direct investment naturally, and maximizes the amount, quality and potential economic benefits of (federal direct investment) in this country,” Saha said.
Majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign companies employed 5.6 million American workers in 2011, according to the report. The largest concentration of foreign jobs in both the U.S. and Bridgeport metro areas was in manufacturing. Nationally, there are more than 2 million workers in the manufacturing sector and 16,700 in Bridgeport, according to the study.
The increase in foreign-owned jobs was mostly due to mergers and acquisitions of existing firms as opposed to new openings, the study showed. In the Bridgeport area, 14,300 jobs in foreign-owned establishments came from mergers and acquisitions, and 5,900 jobs came from new openings, according to the CTPost article.
