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Greensboro’s business recruiters don’t spend as much money bringing jobs here as groups elsewhere, and that’s something at least one fiscally conservative county commissioner can get behind.

The Greensboro Economic Development Alliance, the city’s private recruiter, reported Tuesday that it spends $833 for every job that it directly recruits.

If you include jobs that pop up indirectly, that number drops to $328 per job, according to a report the group delivered at a breakfast for business and community leaders. The national average for direct jobs is $1,600.

That money, which comes from the alliance’s annual budget and not from any public incentives related to specific projects, makes a good case for continuing support from Guilford County and Greensboro, said Billy Yow, a Guilford County commissioner.

Yow, a critic of public incentives, believes regular county support of a group like the alliance is a way of cutting layers out of county and city government, something he’s advocated for years.

Last week, the county laid off Rob Bencini, its economic development coordinator. That came just as the city’s assistant city manager for economic development, Jim Westmoreland, left for a job at the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Yow said Tuesday’s report makes a case for contracting with a private group like the experts at the alliance.

“They’re producing more product than we were in-house with county staff or with city staff,” Yow said. “And that’s how we could justify the reduction in force in the county side and the city side.”

According to the report, the alliance recruited 1,558 jobs in 2008, and those jobs led to 2,479 secondary jobs.

For the five-year period the group calls the “Forward Greensboro III Campaign,” the group recruited 6,307 jobs which led to another 9,696 secondary jobs. All those jobs create a total annual payroll of $624.5 million, which includes retail and service jobs citywide.

Those new jobs recruited by the alliance are typically better paying at $46,440 than the city per capita income of $27,968.

Although the report does not include the millions of dollars that have been spent on public incentives to recruit companies, Dan Lynch, the alliance president, wouldn’t be afraid to include those costs.

“I think we would come out very well if you did a full-blown, inclusive of incentives, analysis,” he said.

That’s because the city and the county use a formula that guarantees more tax dollars will come in than they’ll spend on incentives.

In other business at Tuesday’s meeting, the alliance awarded two community leaders the Stanley Frank Lifetime Achievement Award.

Donald Cameron, the president of GTCC, and Ted Johnson, executive director of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority, were named. The award is named after Stanley Frank, who was a trustee of Guilford College and community benefactor as well as a longtime leader of PTAA.

A statement from the alliance said Cameron has “been a progressive force in education and streamlined the relationship between the college and the business community.”

Johnson, the group said, “has supervised massive improvements to the airport terminal and to the runway and road system in preparation for the FedEx Express Hub.”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com