Charleston An Affordable Business City

West Virginia’s capital city ranks among the fourth most inexpensive city for doing business in a national survey of metropolitan areas its size. The research, carried out by the accounting company KPMG LLP, found that the costs of operating in the Charleston area are 5.5 percent below the national average. Charleston’s labor costs are second-lowest among the cities in the group. Its transportation, electricity and benefits costs are also on the low end, the survey found.

Among Charleston-area industries, clinical trials management was found to be the most cost-competitive, with costs averaging more than 11 percent under the national average for costs. Biomedical research and development, electronic systems product testing and back-office services were found to operate about 8.5 percent under the national average for those sectors. In fact, the costs for every industry sector are lower in the Charleston area than each sector’s national average. The least competitive sector here is telecommunications, where costs are 1.6 percent below the national average for telecom.

The study measures the combined impact of business operating costs like labor, facility, transportation and utilities, as well as income taxes. It tallies those costs after taxes, estimating the starting up and 10 years of operations of companies in 12 industries. KPMG conducts city cost studies every other year, but this year is the first to have included Charleston.

Fifty Federal Jobs Added In Parkersburg

Fifty new federal jobs have been created in Parkersburg to handle certain administrative roles for the U.S. Mint. The Mint has shifted work to a unit of the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt, which is based in Parkersburg. The bureau's Parkersburg office includes an Administrative Resource Center that performs accounting, travel, procurement and human resources services for about 60 federal agencies. Of the 1,800 bureau employees in Parkersburg, about 500 work for the Administrative Resource Center. The new jobs were for positions such as accounting systems, accounting technicians, human resource specialists and contract specialists.

CDI To Expand Technology Operations

CDI Corporation (CDI) plans to expand its operations in the Kanawha Valley, resulting in the creation of as many as 50 new jobs. The CDI-IT Solutions Group will locate in the former Dondale Furniture building along Goff Mountain Rd. in Cross Lanes. The move includes the planned addition of 50-plus technology jobs during the first year of operation and an expected investment of nearly $500,000 in new equipment. The facility will house CDI's help desk operations and related support positions. The technology leader currently has operations in the Dow Technology Center in South Charleston.