Greater Richmond

Advantages for Life Sciences

Labor and Demographics

Our population of over 1.2 million people is culturally and ethnically diverse, with a growing international community. Ten colleges and universities produce a steady stream of employees for new and expanding companies in fields including business, engineering, law, and medicine. According to local staffing firms, the Richmond Region is an easy sell to top-level professionals and managers. The area’s outstanding quality of life helps companies recruit, relocate, and retain all the right people to meet current and future needs.

The Richmond metropolitan area is a magnet for labor, drawing a workforce from more than 40 localities statewide. Diverse industries and companies combined with numerous educational institutions provide an ample supply of employees with positive work attitudes and a range of skills and experience for new and expanding companies.

Labor Availability

Young people graduating from high school, college, and other training are the largest continuing source of labor for the long term. In the Richmond MSA there are more than 13,000 high school graduates each year and the area’s institutions of higher education confer more than 9,000 post-secondary degrees each year.

Total employment in the Richmond-Petersburg MSA was 659,223 in June 2008.

In the metro area, 44% of the total population is in the prime working ages of 25-54, higher than the national average of 43%

Labor Management Relations 

• Virginia is a right-to-work state.

• Greater Richmond and the state of Virginia have low levels of unionization and union election activity.

• Less than 1 percent of the MSA’s 28,600 private business establishments are known to be unionized (138 manufacturing and service businesses).

• Approximately 2.1 percent of the private sector workforce is unionized.

• No office-intensive operation is known to be unionized.

• Work stoppages are few in number and usually part of a nationwide or statewide action.

 Labor Costs

• Wages are moderate in the metro area.

• Virginia has the 5^th lowest cost of Workers’ Compensation for manufacturers in the nation.

• Virginia's unemployment compensation costs are among the lowest in the nation.