A worker cleans a Volkswagen logo in the production line at the Volkswagen plant in this file photo.By the numbers2,415 jobs at the plant12,400 jobs at the plant and in businesses grown here for VW support.$642.1 million a year in annual income to workers$31.2 million a year in state tax revenue$22.3 million a year in annual local tax revenue
As the region waits to learn whether Chattanooga’s VW plant will expand to include a cool new SUV on assembly lines here, few need the recent University of Tennessee report to understand what a boon Volkswagen has meant to this local economy.
Anyone doubting that should try to picture what Chattanooga’s job climate might have looked like through the recession that snapped a vise on the rest of the country in 2008 — the same year VW threw us a lifeline.
While many of our neighbors and most of Tennessee fought through more than a year of double-digit percent joblessness, Chattanooga mostly tracked snug in single digits.
But UT’s new report does add tasty icing to this region’s anticipation of more good news.