Illustration of a rising gold payroll line above a flat row of white rooftops, Wilson County housing and jobs

1,885 Announced Jobs in Wilson County, and 411 Housing Permits

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by

Eddie Coleman
in

Johnson & Johnson will build a second manufacturing facility in Wilson County, adding up to 500 jobs to the 420 the company committed there in October 2024. It’s the fifth large manufacturing announcement there since March 2024, 1,885 jobs between them. Those jobs are the input. Workforce housing and daily-needs retail demand are the output. Wilson County authorized 411 new private housing units by building permit in 2025.

The Announcement

The new facility will make finished medicines for cancer and neurological disease. Johnson & Johnson called the investment multibillion dollar without itemizing it, and hasn’t named the site. The first project is further along: a biologics campus of more than $2 billion off Lamm Road, 500,000 square feet, under construction since March 2025 and already hiring.

By the numbers:

  • Up to 500 new jobs at the second facility, on top of 420 at the first
  • An average wage of $108,823 at the first Wilson project, against a Wilson County average of $52,619
  • A Job Development Investment Grant of up to $13,666,000 over twelve years and $1.5 million from the One North Carolina Fund, both on the first project
  • A $12 million appropriation expected for the Wilson Community College training center, plus a grant from the state’s Industrial Development Fund Utility Account

The Office of the Governor announced it, with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and the City of Wilson among the organizations named. That’s a deep bench for a county of 81,000, and it’s the sort of work North Carolina’s economic development apparatus does well and doesn’t get enough credit for.

Three other manufacturers got there first, all in 2024: SCHOTT Pharma at $371 million and 401 jobs, IDEXX Laboratories at $147 million and 275 jobs, and Reckitt at $145.59 million and 289 jobs. Each pays above the county average.

Where Wilson Sits in Eastern North Carolina

Wilson is the county seat, out on I-95 where US 264 comes through from the Triangle, about fifty minutes from Raleigh. Interstate, rail and industrial sites are what the county has to sell.

What hasn’t kept up is housing. Wilson County has 38,463 housing units of every kind for 81,150 residents, and 60.0% of its occupied homes are owned rather than rented. Median gross rent is $953 against $1,228 statewide. Those are five-year Census figures through 2024. Asking rent is more current: apartments in Wilson averaged $1,369 on 976 square feet in August 2026, up 7.49% over the year, while North Carolina averaged $1,571 on 979 square feet and was down 0.2%. Nearly the identical unit, two hundred dollars cheaper, moving the opposite direction from the state.

New rental supply gets delivered in batches, and demand arrives over time. A market working through a batch holds rents flat until it clears. Wilson has nothing to work through. The county authorized 411 new private housing units by building permit in 2025, down from 580 in 2024, and 2,327 across the five years from 2021 through 2025. The pipeline that does exist is for-sale product: Savannah Place, 412 single-family homes and townhouses, put its first 108 lots in front of builders this year.

Retail hasn’t been rebuilt either. The City of Wilson bought the 45-acre Wilson Mall in 2022 and finished demolishing it in April 2026. The mall had been closed since 2013. Forty-five acres of trade area are cleared and waiting for private development.

The arithmetic is plain enough. Plenty of those 1,885 jobs will go to people already living in Wilson, Nash, Edgecombe, Johnston and Greene counties, and some to long commutes. But if even half of them bring a household to the county at the local average of 2.36 people, that’s roughly 2,200 new residents against a population of 81,150. The bigger number is the wage. The first Johnson & Johnson campus averages $108,823 in a county whose average is $52,619, and the apartment stock waiting for those households is priced at $1,369.

Why We Watch Announcements Like This

We are fortunate to work and invest in North Carolina. People keep moving here and employers keep coming, and it’s our back yard: we know the towns and the neighborhoods, we can drive to every property, and we manage what we buy. Working only in North Carolina is a choice rather than a limit. That said, not every North Carolina property underwrites. The rents, the costs and the debt have to make sense on what the market pays today, and plenty of them don’t. Given the properties that do, we take the markets getting announcements like this one. That’s why we pay attention when one gets made.

The sequence of events in development is well established. New workers arrive before new housing does. Most rent first, and close enough to drive. The grocery, the doctor, the gym and the daycare follow the rooftops. Workforce housing and daily-needs retail fill up together. Construction shows up last, as demand increases housing and retail rents. Demand arrives years ahead of the supply that answers it, and five to seven years is long enough for that to work through.

Markets that will benefit: Wilson itself first, then the US 264 corridor west toward Zebulon and Wendell, and the I-95 corridor north toward Rocky Mount and south toward Kenly and Selma. Then the wider commuter shed across Nash, Edgecombe, Johnston and Greene counties.

There’s no bad real estate, just bad timing. Wilson has taken five of these announcements in under two years and permitted fewer homes last year than the year before. The payroll got here first, and around here it usually does.

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