(RTTNews) - Apple, Inc. (AAPL: News ) on Wednesday selected North Carolina for a new data center that will be the first on the east coast, media reports said. The company is expected to invest more than $1 billion into the project in the next nine years and can reportedly create more than 3000 jobs in the regional economy.

The announcement follows the signing of the Senate Bill 575 by North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue that modifies the method by which capital-intensive businesses calculate corporate income tax liability in North Carolina.

The official website of the state of North Carolina states that according to the legislation, a capital-intensive industry must meet investment and wage standards and provide its employees with health insurance in order to utilize the modified formula for calculating the state corporate income tax. It requires that the average wage exceed the wage standard of the county in which it is located.

Further, the legislation requires that the capital-intensive industry must be located in one of the state's more economically distressed Tier 1 or Tier 2 areas. Incidentally, the legislation proved the necessary incentive for Apple to choose the state for its data center at a time when unemployment rates are steadily on the rise in the North Carolina.
Preliminary information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that unemployment rate in the state for April 2009 rose 5.1 percentage points to 10.8% from 5.7% in the year-ago month. In other words, nearly 493 thousand people of the 4.58 million labor force were unemployed. For April 2008, only around 258 thousand were unemployed of the 4.51 million labor force.

The proposed data center or server farm is expected to employ at least 50 full-time employees entailing expenditures that could range from $5 million to $6 million annually in the region and create up to 250 jobs, reports added.

AAPL ended Wednesday's trading at $140.95 on the Nasdaq.

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by RTT Staff Writer

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