The economic impact report on the Memphis Redbirds by University of Memphis’ Sparks Center for Business and Economic contained some persuasive information about the importance of Triple-A baseball in Memphis – $24 million a year in economic impact – but what caught our eye were a couple of charts that illustrated the case that we’ve been making here for awhile.
The problems facing our community are regional in nature.
Often, the prevailing conventional wisdom is that Memphis and Shelby County are the roots of all problems in our MSA. We see it in the racially-tinged diatribes that pass for comments on The Commercial Appeal’s online edition – one of the scourges of the local scene – and we hear it in the comments by non-Memphis elected officials.
And yet, what makes our community distinctive are not the typical problems found in other urban areas but unlike most of our peer cities, the area outside the core city and county of the MSA don’t boost our indicators but are a drag on them.
The Aberration
In Nashville, Atlanta, and Indianapolis, for example, the non-core counties of the MSA drive up the median incomes and educational attainment and drive down unemployment rates. Here, things are different. The other counties in the Memphis metro do nothing to improve our stats, raising a red flag for companies evaluating the region for new operations and investments.
In other words, challenges to the Memphis region are no respecters of state or county lines – an aging workforce, too few 25-34 year-old workers, low educational attainment, poverty, and unsustainable sprawl. Sadly, there’s a sense in the region outside Memphis that if the future of the city is about a middle class exodus, entrenched poverty, and hollowed out, deteriorating neighborhoods, that is Memphis’ problem, not theirs.
We’ve pointed out before that in a ranking of cities, Memphis is not in the top 10 cities with the highest poverty rate. And yet, in MSAs, we are in the top three because the poverty rate outside Shelby County is aberrantly high when compared to other suburbs in other regions.
Population Relocation
Back to the charts in the economic impact study for the Redbirds. There was one that compared key measurements between the West Tennessee counties that are part of our MSA and the population change for the counties in our MSA. It paints a disturbing picture of a region with some serious structural problems.
For example, population growth continues to be births over deaths because there is no real in-migration to think of. Between 2000-2010, the total net migration into our region was only 18,481. The growth of the population from 1,205,204 to 1,316,100 resulted largely from 198,438 births and 106,023 deaths.
Put another way, the great diaspora of Memphis and Shelby County is responsible for the growth of population in our neighboring county, but at the end of the day, the economic pie really isn’t getting bigger. We are merely rearranging the people on the map, not attracting new ones who bring new economic activity and new ideas.
The net out-migration from Shelby County in the first decade of the 21st century was 38,780 people. The largest beneficiary in the population relocation was DeSoto County, which had 42,801 new migrants. Meanwhile, Fayette and Tipton Counties only recorded 8,201 and 5,925 respectively. The Mississippi Counties of Marshall, Tate, and Tunica County grew by only 538 people, 2,098 people, and 494 people.
Tale of the Tape
The second chart of West Tennessee counties indicates the way that Memphis and Shelby County sit in the midst of a vast wasteland of struggling counties. It is the rare West Tennessee county whose economies and indicators are moving in the right direction. As we have said before, it’s time for a West Tennessee economic summit to develop some strategies to improve trajectories headed in the wrong direction.
In the context of West Tennessee, the counties adjacent to Memphis are doing much better than their sister counties, but they suggest the weaknesses that are characteristic of West Tennessee.
In Shelby County, 27.5% of the population older than 25 has bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared to 8.7% in Lauderdale County, 13.3% in Fayette County, and 14.1% in Tipton County. It’s no surprise that the unemployment rates range from 10.1-14.1%, but more to the point, at a time when the percentage of the population with college degrees accounts for 60% of a region’s economic success, it portends poorly for the future.
Finally, the average private sector annual income in Shelby County is $47,315. In Fayette County, it is $37,539; in Tipton County, it is $30,801; and in Lauderdale County, it is $31,157.
Serious Time for Serious Answers
There should be argument that our region is in trouble. It has serious, challenging structural issues, and the first step in a path to a plan for the future is complete honesty about how regional problems are a persistent drag on our economic competitiveness.
Memphis rightly is a member of various national coalitions of major cities, but so much of its future depends on turning around the West Tennessee economy of which we are a part. There is a discussion about the future that Memphis must lead, and it ignores these structural problems at its own peril.
This is a time when we need to convert the rhetoric about regionalism into a reality defined by a shared alarm about the future and giving birth to an unusual regional collaboration to find answers that are sustainable and long-term in nature because it is no longer enough to chase the latest magic answer when careful strategies must be developed and pursued.
Well said.
…but it has been said again and again and again in ad nauseam for more years than I care to remember. Before I even moved to Memphis, the message was the same: the local and regional economies are stagnant at best and beyond recovery in the most dire instances. What would be refreshing in a season whose message is based on renewed hope and salvation is some sign that an awakening is occurring in the hinterlands as well as our own backyards. That the “good ole boys” of Crockett County are at least willing to admit they are not nearly as “good” as they have themselves and their constituents believing. That the residents of South Memphis realize that the cycle of poverty must be broken and such effort will require a high level of commitment and willingness to break from what is becoming a specialized cultural group. Both efforts begin in their own homes.
It requires at least one person in each of these communities to begin the conversation, but how do we reach the individual(s) who qualify? I know I personally am not best fit to be the messenger nor the seed sower for this message- my patience has worn thin for the blatantly obvious
Conversation with myself here: part of the issue is identifying the problem. The problem in and of itself is not a lack of employment opportunities or educational achievement. The issue is more fundamental than that. Why are residents in these areas failing to earn a degree? Why does economic development elude this region? Examining the maps provided at http://www.socialexplorer.com and some admittedly older data sets, I recognized a few several underlying trends when compared to peer cities/regions (Nashville, Dallas, Atlanta, OKC) that have been detailed thoroughly by SCM in the past. In most of these cases, the Mississippi Delta counties from Memphis south exhibit the most extreme indicators, but the common threads are prevalent throughout the Mid-South. The region has a higher percentage of households with children and a higher percentage of homes that lack a male parental figure. The region sees a much higher percentage of these children in a situation where a grandparent is the primary caregiver. Also higher is the percentage of individuals who have never married or are separated. There is also the typical smorgasbord of data where at least the Memphis metropolitan area is comparable to the above mentioned peer cities. Of course, the region lags in educational attainment but in different areas. While the Memphis metro is comparable up to the point of residents receiving a 2 year degree, the level of attainment stagnates at the level of earning one’s bachelor and falls off noticeably at the masters and doctorate level. While the surrounding region is comparable at the “some college” level, it has a noticeably higher percentage of residents who did not graduate from High School. If I had to sum it up in one overgeneralized statement, a significant difference between the Memphis region and other areas is the fact that we have an abundance of households headed by women with minimal education achievement who are housing children of their own.
This in turn shines a light on a critical issue impacting the ability of our region to compete: a very large percentage of children being born and raised in the Mid-South lack a basic level of stability and support. If this is a fundamental foundation to a region’s success, it also suggests that any solutions will be generational in nature and will require a decade of effort before any notable returns can be recognized.
Of course, another interpretation would suggest that other regions are saddled with the same number of residents in these categories, but their numbers are drowned out by the overwhelming scale of new, affluent arrivals being attracted to the region. Chicken and egg situation. Does the employer come first and the buzz second, or is it vice versa?
Thanks for the comments. It proves again why we think we have the smartest readers anywhere.
More cities are confronting this problem than not in the Midwest, and in many respects, we are a Midwestern city more than a Southern city. With about 15 cities soaking up all the 25-34 year-old talent, the problem is amplified in cities like ours by the stagnant nature of in-migration — not to mention the out-migration of the precise people we need to be keeping. The point that we have a low college graduate rate and a high partial college completion rate is both a big problem and a big opportunity. There are some fine programs now trying to lure these people back into college, but climbing tuition costs and lack of commitment by state government to higher education are two trends lines for which we pay dearly here.
These are indeed Delta indicators that we’re writing about, and it seems clear that the political entities are incapable of lowering their territorial concerns long enough to form a basis for addressing regional problems. To us, it’s why the new president of the Greater Memphis Chamber is a key hire for this region. It would be good if it’s somebody who knows how to build alliances and bridges based on a mutuality of economic interests. We hope this isn’t wishful thinking.
As for poverty, there is a program that’s been in formulation for the past year and should be rolled in the early months of 2014. It will be different from things that have gone before, so hopefully, by taking a different approach, it can achieve its goal of reducing the city poverty rate from 27% to 17% in 10 years.
Memphis and the region produce a goodly number of high school graduates who go on the be college graduates, BUT, they move away to go to college and never come back after graduating. Many of our best and brightest are produced here only to take their smarts and talents to other cities for college and later, careers. They don’t come back, and the suburbs of Memphis cannot get even their own children to come back to those same suburbs to live after college.
They are smart not to come back, pal ! They look at better options which is very very smart. Memphis is a demonstrated laggard by its own hand.
Stop all the pretending. Go back to basics and deal with remediation.
The town is 20 years behind., Stop baying at the moon like dogs.
I love it when someone attempt to berate a whole group of individuals by saying they are “x” years behind. Perhaps the most hypocritical and uneducated remark that could possibly be made in reference to any topic.
He’s a well-known troll who has fantasies of living on a beach somewhere going to gourmet restaurants and eating freshly prepared dishes only he can truly appreciate due to his vast epicurean experiences. Thinks he’s a rabbi, too. What a tool.