West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Business Summit to get underway Wednesday
August 26, 2025
GREENBRIER COUNTY, W.Va. –The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce is set to host its 89th annual three-day Business Summit beginning Wednesday at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs.
During an appearance on MetroNews Midday Wednesday afternoon, Chamber President Steve Roberts said this year’s summit will feature record attendance, membership, and sponsorships.
He attributed the growth to new companies coming to the Mountain State, specifically highlighting Nucor in Mason County. He also noted growing interest from the healthcare sector, including Marshall Health, WVU Health, and Vandalia Health.
Roberts said the summit supports their mission of bringing people together to help strengthen the state.
“The goals of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce are to see a better economy, better health, better education for all of our people, and people want to come together and talk about those things and see how you do those things and work together to make those happen,” he said.
Over the course of the three-day summit, there will be a total of 61 speakers, including mayors from Huntington the mayors from Huntington, Charleston, and Parkersburg, along with Governor Patrick Morrisey, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, WVU President Michael Benson, and more.
Roberts said it gives everyone the opportunity to come together.
“This is where the bankers, the financial leaders, the educators, the industrial leaders, the manufacturers all gather to talk about what’s going right in West Virginia and take a look at what we can do better because even though we got a lot of things going in the right direction, we always know there’s room for improvements and we want to talk about how to make those improvements to keep us on the right track,” he said.
One of the things that will be a main topic is the decline in jobs in the state. A recent Workforce West Virginia report revealed there was a decline of more than 7,000 civilian jobs and a total employment decrease of more than 4,000.
Roberts said that between 2015 and early 2020, the state had consistently seen an increase in the number of jobs, however when COVID hit in 2020 through 2023, we had seen a decline. He did say that the numbers looked like they were going back up beginning in the middle of 2023, but they declined somewhere between 2024 and 2025.
He said that they have people aware of this and are going to make this a focus on the summit.
“We’ve pointed that out, we’ve called this to the legislature and our policymakers because we think there’s more to be done to improve West Virginia’s business climate and make us attractive to people who might want to bring companies here and to people who may be able to grow jobs here, and really that’s what we want,” Roberts said.
The industries that have lost the most jobs are mining, manufacturing, hospitality, and retail.
In order to support this focus, the Chamber has made several proposals to the state legislature, including:
- Making West Virginia’s Corporate Net Income Tax more competitive
- Creating a statewide Childcare Tri-Share program
- Expanding tax credits for employer-sponsored childcare
- Reforming the Equipment and Inventory Tax
- Raising teacher pay and modernizing hiring practices
- Boosting completion for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and increasing workforce participation
- Improving legal fairness; including statute of limitations reform and eliminating phantom damages
- Increasing site development funding
- Reducing unemployment insurance taxes on employers
- Incentivizing value-added use of natural gas
Roberts said that this summit will also give small businesses in West Virginia the opportunity to talk to other business owners to help strengthen their businesses in the state.
“This is an opportunity for them to work together, meet each other, visit with each other, exchange ideas, you know there’s a saying I love, if you have a dollar, and I have a dollar, and we exchange dollars we each have one dollar, but if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas we go away with a new and additional idea,” he said.
Roberts emphasized that this will be the 27th year the summit includes a Court Watch presentation, which allows the business community to evaluate decisions made by the Supreme Court of Appeals and whether those decisions will attract jobs to the state or drive them away.
The summit will get underway Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. and go until Friday.
To learn more about the summit visit the chamber’s website here.
Story by Morgan Pemberton, MetroNews