The Walt Disney Company is joining a growing number of businesses to move some operations out of California to states considered to have a “business friendly climate,” in this case Florida where its second theme park is located.
Florida not only has weathered the coronavirus pandemic without imposing draconian lockdown protocols for businesses but it is also a lower-tax state.
Fox Business News reported on the announcement:
Disney will move about 2,000 jobs from its California headquarters to a new campus in Florida, according to Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products.
Most of the jobs being moved are professional roles in Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division, other than those tied to Disneyland in California, D’Amaro told employees in a letter provided to FOX Business Thursday.
The jobs will go to a new campus to be built in Lake Nona, a planned community in Orlando. The move will happen over the next 18 months. D’Amaro said the company decided to make the move in part because of “Florida’s business-friendly climate.”
“This new regional campus gives us the opportunity to consolidate our teams and be more collaborative and impactful both from a creative and operational standpoint,” D’Amaro said.
Disney already has more than 60,000 employees in central Florida.
California’s virus lockdowns shuttered Disneyland there for months while Disney World in Florida was only shut down for four months and opened to limited capacity a year ago.
“Tech firms like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle have also announced plans to leave,” Fox Business reported. “California’s population dropped by about 135,600 people in 2020. Among them was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who moved to Texas where the company was building a factory and his rocket business, SpaceX, has been testing spacecraft.”
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