SAVANNAH — Lorelei Neighbors first learned about the Hyundai electric vehicle factory planned for Georgia while moving from Colorado to Savannah in January 2023.
Driving east along I-16, she passed the then-barren 3,000-acre plant site. Neighbors’ first reaction? “Wow, that’s going to be a big factory.” Her second? “That’s going to mean a lot of jobs.”
With a background in manufacturing — she was a machinery technician in Colorado — she filed away Hyundai as a potential employment option. Now 18 months later, she just completed an electric vehicle technician certification course at Savannah Technical College and is prepping to interview for a position at Hyundai.
Neighbors is but one example of how Hyundai’s facility is reshaping the Savannah area’s labor landscape. The assembly plant and adjacent battery factory, located 25 miles west of downtown Savannah near Ellabell, will employ 8,500 at full buildout while suppliers put 7,000 more residents to work.
Those companies will staff up gradually, but with Hyundai already making test vehicles at the factory and full production slated to begin this fall, the first aftershock from what locals call the “Hyundai employment earthquake” has been felt.
Credit: Photo courtesy of HMGNA
Credit: Photo courtesy of HMGNA
In a region with historically low unemployment — the rate has hovered at or below 3% since early 2022 — labor supply concerns have haunted local officials since Hyundai broke ground in October 2022. A workforce study commissioned by the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Joint Development Authority (Savannah JDA), which partnered with state economic development leaders to woo Hyundai, projected a need for 24,000 more workers in the region to absorb the addition of the South Korean automaker’s factory.
So far, Savannah’s workforce pipeline is meeting demand. Of Hyundai’s 850-plus hires over the past year, 81% are local residents who live within 60 miles of the factory. Hyundai’s 17 suppliers have likewise had success, hiring another 600 — and a job fair staged for three suppliers on July 17 packed a local high school gym for three hours. Two other supplier job fairs held elsewhere in the region in recent weeks have seen a similar response.
The Hyundai factory, billed as a next-generation manufacturing facility where automated guided vehicles deliver parts and perform tasks alongside workers, appears to be a labor magnet. The most recent Georgia Department of Labor report shows Savannah’s labor supply has grown by 6,000 workers over the last year, including a 2,000-person jump in May as high school and college graduates entered the workforce.
The 4% growth is well beyond the norm of 2.3% to 2.4%, according to Savannah-based economist Michael Toma with Georgia Southern University.
Leaders in other industries who anticipated labor losses due to poaching, such as warehousing and hospitality, have yet to sound alarms. Neither have other nearby manufacturers, such as Gulfstream and heavy equipment maker JCB. A Gulfstream official said the business jet giant is “actively recruiting” for the 1,600 new jobs created with the opening of a new assembly line to build the G400 aircraft.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
The positive early returns are reassuring to Anna Chafin, who leads a regional workforce development organization known as RISE. The entity was created in response to a workforce study conducted last year that sounded the alarm about Savannah’s labor market.
“We’ve been off to the races and so far so good,” Chafin said. “We have employers from across the region engaged and on the same page as far as what affects one affects all.”
But it’s still early days. The workforce report stressed that Savannah and the surrounding region had enough underemployed workers to meet needs in 2024 and projected a shortage starting in 2025.
Today and tomorrow
The homegrown talent includes Neighbors as well as her Savannah Tech classmate Bob Jones, who retired from the U.S. Army two years ago after a career maintaining and repairing Blackhawk helicopters. Rather than pursue an aviation job — Gulfstream operates the world’s largest service center tailored to private jets — he sees Hyundai as an opportunity to build on his existing skills.
“Aviation will always be there for me,” he said. “EVs are the future. I wanted to try something new.”
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Savannah has no history as an auto manufacturing base, so experienced help must be recruited from manufacturers of products in other industries or from automakers elsewhere. Georgia and neighboring states South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama are home to factories making 10 car brands, providing access to talent within the region.
Hyundai has also found success recruiting talent away from other EV manufacturers, particularly startups. Brent Stubbs, Hyundai’s senior manager for learning and development, said Hyundai offers the technology of a startup with the support of the world’s third-largest automaker.
“The excitement of the new with the stability that comes with success,” he said. “That’s been a major draw.”
Credit: Bloomberg
Credit: Bloomberg
Finding enough laborers to fill the entry-level positions is projected as the bigger challenge. Of the first-shift workers already hired, 96% are local. The automaker has yet to divulge the timeline for adding a second shift to its production schedule, but Stubbs said to expect another wave of growth in “early or mid-2025.”
Those additional labor needs do not include hiring for the six partner subsidiaries that will operate on the same site as the assembly facility, including the EV battery plant currently under construction.
Infrastructure is in place
A training network is already established, whether recruits are local and without expertise or transplants with experience. Savannah Tech is one of four technical colleges offering the EV technician program, and close to 100 graduates are now employed by Hyundai.
Those hires and others who are part of Hyundai’s production team also spend several months in job training provided by Georgia Quick Start, a state agency that tailors instruction to client needs. Savannah is home to one Quick Start facility, the Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Pooler. Quick Start has set up two other temporary training centers in Savannah as well as one in Pembroke near the factory site, another at Ogeechee Technical College in Statesboro, and two more in rented spaces in Liberty and Candler counties.
An onsite training center is under construction at the Hyundai factory site, as is an expansion of the Advanced Manufacturing Training Center. Both will open in 2025.
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
So far, the Quick Start grads are performing above expectations, according to Stubbs. That assessment doesn’t surprise Quick Start officials. The program has been in operation for more than 50 years and led the training efforts for an auto factory run by Hyundai’s sister company, Kia, that opened in West Point in 2009.
“We committed contractually to train to a specific standard,” said Susan Williams, Quick Start’s executive director for Savannah-area operations. “If they want them at this level, we want to give them employees who perform at the next level up from there.”
About the Author
