Editor's note: The following is a copy of the prepared remarks by Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Don Cunningham at LVEDC's annual meeting March 18 at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks in Bethlehem.
Thank you all for being here. This is our largest crowd for an LVEDC Annual Meeting. And it’s fitting. 
Today we celebrate our 30 years of existence but – more importantly – the Lehigh Valley’s economic success.
I thank all the board members – past and present - for their guidance and direction and volunteer time. Special thanks today to Ed Dougherty, who has been a steady hand of leadership for so long. He’s been a friend and a mentor. Thanks also to Steve Hoff, our new chair. Steve embraced LVEDC right away and took a leadership role. He provides great insight and wise counsel, all with good humor and perspective.
I thank our staff – both past and present. It wasn’t always a smooth ride for LVEDC. But building something new from nothing never is.
Our team today is one of skilled professionals and just plain, good people. They work hard and believe in our mission - and the Lehigh Valley, this special place we call home. They’ve been awarded nationally – some as individuals for specific programs and products, and collectively as one of the country’s leading economic development organizations. I ask them all to stand and be recognized as a team. I am honored to work with all of you.
You’ll hear from 3 of LVEDC’s 4 VPs today - all but one, because she’s too busy coordinating this event – Nicole Mertz, our VP of marketing, communications, and research. A former journalist, she’s as hard-working, diligent, and thoughtful as they come – a little stage shy – but she knows how to throw a party!
I thank Lehigh and Northampton counties – and all 62 municipalities – for taking the leap and being part of a regional coalition to develop our economy while still serving the needs of your own community. Thank you to all our partner organizations in the region, the cities, and municipalities. Economic success requires a village – and we have a great one. To our state and federal representatives who embrace the policies - and deliver the resources - to help us grow and prosper, it couldn’t happen without you.
And to the private sector leaders – those who envisioned and created this organization 30 years ago and sustain it today – you bring a critical perspective unencumbered by elected geography. For 30 years, you’ve realized responsibility - and created and sustained - something special with your time, talent, and resources.
Together, all of you are the Lehigh Valley’s secret sauce. A coalition of the willing - stitched together into a tapestry - that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The Lehigh Valley didn’t just survive, it thrives because of this regional coalition.
President Kennedy famously said, “Victory has a thousand fathers” – and, I’ll update it and add, mothers. “Defeat is an orphan.”
At your seats – and available online – is a great economic timeline of the Lehigh Valley from 1995 to today. For those who’ve been here the last 30 years, it will spur memories of the good and bad. To those who’ve found your way here, it will bring perspective.
It wasn’t always like this.
Many of you have heard me speak before of those days in the 90s and early 2000s when business closures dominated the headlines and we fought “brain drain,” losing our young people to places with more opportunity.
These blast furnaces behind me fell silent in 1995. The final pour of hot metal tapped, ending a century-long run that produced the iron and steel that helped to win world wars and build skylines and bridges.
This is one of my favorite family photos. It’s my dad on the hot metal pouring floor in the Ingot Mould Foundry.
His work was much different than mine.
Today, Ingot Mould is gone. U.S. Cold Storage stands where it once was off Emery Street. Same site, different use. The land continuing to be productive in a different economy – continuing to create opportunity for people to live here – to enjoy life – to raise a family – to carve out their little piece of an American dream.
That’s what we celebrate today - more than an organization, awards and rankings, or statistics - although you’ll hear many of them.
Statistics are the markers of success, not the reason for them.
In the end, the fancy term “economic development” is more easily understood at that human level. People don’t require rankings. They feel it – when you have it and when you don’t. It’s simple. Are there enough jobs with enough pay for people of all skill levels, educational backgrounds, and cultures to enjoy life, raise a family and get that piece of the American dream.
When it’s not working, people leave for elsewhere. I watched that happen. It’s what most of my classmates did after graduating from Bethlehem’s Freedom High School in 1983.
When it is working, people come home. They find their way from other areas or countries. There are many statistics I can cite – and I encourage you all to read the LVEDC Annual Report at your seats. All done in-house by our great communications team led by Paul Muschick. But the ones that matter are about people.
I believe that’s why this organization was created, why people invest in it. I believe it’s what motivates all of us involved in LVEDC, all of us in this room.
The Lehigh Valley has the largest workforce in its history – about 364,000 people. If you want to work here, you can. Let’s hope we can keep it that way.
The region has had its lowest consistent unemployment rate – today at 3.8 percent – since those statistics were kept.
The average hourly wage earned is $28.87.
Median household income is now $81,709, higher than that of the U.S. and Pennsylvania. It grew by $17,000 during the last five years and has outpaced inflation during that time. Those are averages and medians so obviously not everyone makes that.
But we tell prospective employers that if they don’t pay $20 per hour with benefits for nonskilled labor, they should prepare to be on a hiring turnstile every 90 days.
With opportunity comes choice. And its opportunity that reduces poverty. The Lehigh Valley’s poverty rate is 10.5 percent. It’s dropping, lower now than a decade ago. Below that of the state and the nation.
Our goal should be zero. Maybe someday.
We are also an employment center for counties around us – people from Monroe, Schuylkill, Warren, NJ, eastern Berks and the upper Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery counties commute here for work. We’re Carbon County’s leading source of jobs.
We now have more people coming here to work than leaving here to work elsewhere.
Our economy is growing at 4 percent – faster than that of the U.S. and Pennsylvania.
The result – and the cause – of these factors is our population growth. Now just under 700,000 people in Lehigh and Northampton counties. It’s grown 6.5 percent in ten years.
That growth, since 2020, is driven by people moving here from other places within the U.S. and abroad. Lehigh and Northampton counties are both in the top five percent of U.S. counties for domestic and international migration.
People seek opportunities and they move to them. This brings new talent, new skills, and new perspectives to a region. You’ll hear soon from a panel of some of our best newcomers.
For the Lehigh Valley, it’s also brought and kept the all-important demographic of young people, which brings – and keeps – employers. Employers don’t stay or relocate to areas losing population and its young people.
The brain drain of yesterday is the brain gain of today.
Last year, Northampton County led all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties in growth in population of 18- to 34-year-olds. The Lehigh Valley now outpaces both the nation and our competition in the Northeastern U.S. for the growth of young people.
It should always be about the next generation – and leaving things better than we found it.
As I said, the growth of people is both the result and the cause of economic growth. Opposite sides of the same coin.
Today, we have the luxury to be selective. The storyline has changed since this organization was in its infancy.
The headlines and e-blasts now scream for attention when a new building or project are proposed. The first reaction is often to oppose. When I was a young mayor here during the late 90s, the Lehigh Valley didn’t have that luxury. We were fighting to recover – to create jobs, new tax base – and to reinvent and save our downtowns. To imagine restaurant districts, and nightlife, new manufacturers. To bring people back and attract new ones.
Recover we did. Reinvent we did.
Bethlehem. Easton. Allentown. The urban boroughs and suburban townships.
Today, the new challenges – those of a growing region - have emerged. We need more housing, more childcare. Supply needs to meet demand to control prices.
Balance is needed to maintain the quality of life that we love while growing the jobs and companies that bring us opportunity and resources – and chase away poverty.
Our economic strategy has changed. The rifle shot has replaced the shotgun blast. We can be more selective. 
Our focus today is to grow our life science, biotech, medical device, software and hardware technology, semiconductors and pharmaceutical companies and advanced manufacturing. We partner with our colleges and universities – our technical high schools - to connect talent to opportunity – students to jobs – to develop entrepreneurs and to help advance tech transfer from faculty and students into commercial companies.
You’ll hear in a moment from Jay Garner of Garner Economics in Atlanta, Ga., a national economic development consultant who has studied the Lehigh Valley for more than 10 years. He advises us on or potential, our place in a competitive world – helping us set lofty goals with ideas on how to get there.
At the core manufacturing remains. We make things here. Always have. Going back to the early days of the Moravians across the river in the 1740s, who produced goods both for themselves and the growing colonies.
Manufacturing again is the largest part of the Lehigh Valley economy. An array of about 750 manufacturers employ about 37,000 workers. The pump out $9 billion a year in GDP, 16 percent of the Lehigh Valley’s economy. By comparison, manufacturing is 12 percent of the U.S. economy.
We punch above our weight class.
We make everything from medical devices to semiconductors, to steel pipe valves and airplane parts, to beer and cranberry juice, to Mack Trucks and crayons – and a lot in between. In honor of our 30th Anniversary we’ve assembled about two dozen of those products and manufacturers here today. They’re displaying their products and telling their story. Our story. We call it Made in Lehigh Valley.
The first Crayola crayons stamped Made in Lehigh Valley have come off the line – and are in your bags. Thank you, Crayola, for honoring us – and leading the way.
In the end, the story of this region is the story of its people, its companies, its schools, institutions, and neighborhoods. Our shared history – our culture, our story. The old has been infused with the new and we’ve become better. We’ve always welcomed new people, new companies, new ideas. We know how to reinvent and reimagine. That’s why we don’t stay down too long, and our future is always brighter than our past.
I can only hope I’m still here 30 years from now to see what the next three decades brings.
As our good friend Jay Garner – fresh off the plane from Atlanta – makes his way to the podium, check out our 30th Anniversary Video, produced right here in the Lehigh Valley, just like all the videos that you are seeing today.
(Photos by Marco Calderon Photography)