RECRUITING SUCCESS MAKES NEW TARGETS HARDER TO HIT.

The states economic-development effort is going to need a strong last eight months of the year to make good on its "very aggressive" targets, one of its top recruiters says.

Through the first four months of 2023, the state had notched "27 recruitment and expansion wins" in its Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties, said Christopher Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

But "where we'd like to be is 40 wins," to meet a benchmark set by averaging performance over the last three years and adding to that a growth factor, Chung told members of the Economic Development Accountability and Standards Committee, an oversight group.

Similarly, the January-to-April wins promise more than 3,400 jobs, and involve...