This post is written by Jimmie Covington, veteran Memphis reporter with lengthy experience covering governmental, school, and demographic issues. He is a contributing writer with The Best Times, a monthly news magazine for active people 50 and older. This article was previously published there.
By Jimmie Covington
Recently released U.S. Census Bureau estimates indicate the number of people moving away from the entire nine-county Memphis metro area to other counties in the United States may be increasing significantly.
The figures, for July 1, 2015, show that since 2010, an estimated 30,467 residents had moved from the metropolitan area to counties elsewhere in the nation. Estimates reported a year ago showed the domestic migration loss for the area from 2010 to July 1, 2014, was 21,999.
It should be emphasized that these figures are estimates and are not actual population counts so the numbers could be significantly off the mark. However, people familiar with census estimates say they are pretty good at reflecting trends although caution should be used when considering numbers for a single year.
As has been usual in recent decades, the biggest domestic migration loss has been in Shelby County. The estimates report, released March 24, show that Shelby County had a loss to domestic migration of 29,285. The loss for 2000 to 2014, reported a year ago, was 21,057.
Since census population counts in recent decades have consistently reflected growth in population in Shelby County outside Memphis while the city’s population has declined, it is considered likely that all of the loss from migration has been in Memphis. The 2015 estimates for cities and towns will be released in the next few months.
Despite the losses to movement to other areas, the populations of the overall metro area and most parts of the metro area have continued to grow as a result of the natural increase of births exceeding deaths.
Growth has continued strong in DeSoto County from more people moving into the county than moving away as well as from more births than deaths. However, unlike the decade of 2000 to 2010, DeSoto County has not been the fastest growing county in Mississippi so far this decade and has dropped out of the 100 fastest growing counties in the nation.
The title on both counts has shifted to Lafayette County (Oxford). The latest estimates report shows Lafayette as the 67th fastest growing county in the county – with a growth rate of 12.2 percent since 2010. The DeSoto growth rate since 2010 has been 7.5 percent.
In the Memphis area, the estimates report on domestic migration shows only DeSoto County (1,420), Tate County (122) and Fayette County (100) had a net gain of residents from other U.S. counties from 2014 to 2015.
According to the estimates, the overall population of the nine county area grew from 1,342,914 in 2014 to 1,344,127 in 2015. Despite the growth, the Memphis area dropped from 41st to 42nd in size among the nation’s metro areas as the Oklahoma City area moved ahead of Memphis. The Memphis area had 1,324,829 residents at the time of the 2010 census.
The Memphis area was 36th in 1950 and 41st in 2010.
The Nashville area, which was 55th in size in 1950 and 37th in 2010, is now 36th. The Nashville area grew from 1,793,910 in 2014 to 1,830,345 in 2015. Its population was 1,670,896 in 2010.
Here are the 2015 population estimates for the Memphis area counties (with the 2014 numbers in parentheses):
Shelby, 938,069 (938,405)
DeSoto, 173,323 (170,886)
Crittenden, 48,963 (49,558)
Tipton, 61,870 (61,812)
Fayette, 39,165 (38,989)
Marshall, 35,916 (36,191)
Tate, 28,296 (28,206)
Tunica, 10,343 (10,545)
While theer statistics are shocking, they are no real surprise either. Memphis has huge problems that make it a highly undesirable place to live and work. This trend isn’t going to change anytime soon. Memphis is a city that is declining in population and in pretty much every other category too.
Will the last person in Memphis please remember to turn off the lights?
Unlike the two Anonymous’ above, I am not going to spread gloom and doom. We can be optimistic that there are a lot of positives about the Memphis area that are waiting to be tapped.
One possible positive outcome from these numbers might be for the suburban counties to wake up and realize that competing with Memphis for jobs is an unworkable long term strategy, that better cooperation for our mutual prosperity might actually work better for us all.
Anon: The migration loss is Memphis metro not Memphis proper. Memphis will be fine regardless of these depressing data. As long as we continue to attract people with a heart for our city, Memphis will continue to become the compassionate welcoming city that it already is.
As Chose901’s motto states Memphis is place where you can “invest and enjoy” your life. Living a purposeful life is priceless and Memphis gives you that opportunity.
We don’t draw any firm conclusions from these numbers, except for the fact that we all need to be pulling in the same direction in pursuit of similar vision.
Also, if you want some encouraging stats: the MSA added 63,000 people with college degrees between 2000-14. 5,500 of them were 25-34 year-olds.
In the end, the future is influenced by the population data, but they do not preordain it.
I would suggest if you are going to make statements like “declining in population and in pretty much every other category too”, it would be intelligent to define the categories. At its heart, such proclamations are far too simplistic. Of course, this sounds like the all too familiar comments posted by the same individual that regular readers and those commenting here have come to expect.
As SCM noted, the increase in the number of residents with college degrees across the age group spectrum is encouraging. At a very high level, it shares a similar theme with the transition of post-industrial cities. Example: Pittsburgh’s population decline has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the average educational attainment achieved by its residents and a surge in income earned by these residents.
That is not to discount the plight of a shrinking city, but to truly understand what is happening we need to examine the characteristics of the change.
Can you explain why Nashville’s metro area has grown so much? It seems like Memphis was always larger in population, but according to this information Nashville is much larger than Memphis and growing rapidly.
I got a TV reporter who asked me why Memphis isn’t keeping pace with Nashville. My reply was that no city is keeping pace with Nashville right. Nashville benefits, in our opinion, from being the state capital, having a great research university, several Fortune 500 companies, and a civic ethos that demands the best in services and facilities. That’s not to mention that 20 years of really good leadership that pursued a shared vision.
Anonymous 3:06, it’s important to remember that Nashville has always been a banking, insurance and government center, as befits its status as the state capital. That creates a lot of old money, stability and less transience in the population.
Memphis has been a transportation and agriculture town, two industries not always known for stability except for those at the top, and those at the top want us to stay as we are. This is part of the reason we have such a high rate of poverty and little mobility.
Great point, Steve. And we once had a strong banking center, but most of the banks were bought up by national banks who moved the decisionmaking somewhere else. Speaking of old money, Nashville has always had higher property values, which allowed the city to invest in quality of life while we had much lower property values to fund services. As we have written several times, if Nashville had our property values, it would have the same property tax rate, and vice versa.
As Steve says, our economic base was commodities and that has inspired commodities thinking that focuses on cheapness rather than quality as a competitive advantage.
Nashville does have a lot of wealth and old money, but it also has a lot of new wealth and a huge health care industry with HCA, CHS and dozens of related health care firms there in addition to Vanderbilt Medical Center. It has always been a famous music and entertainment center which contributes to a huge tourism and convention market. In the last 20 years the area has become a major automotive center with Nissan, Bridgestone, GM and Hanook Tire all there. The Nissan assembly plant in Smyrna produces more cars than any auto plant in North America. Bridgestone is building a HQ skyscraper downtown. These and more help make it a boom town.
One additional thought. Memphis is in the center, the unofficial capital, of one of the poorest regions of the USA and a region with stagnant population growth. West TN has the slowest growth of the three grand divisions, East Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta to the south are part of the alluvial plain that still suffers from the mechanization of agriculture creating few job opportunities and much poverty. Even the Mississippi hill country is largely stagnant with a few exceptions like Oxford and Tupelo.
People still come to Memphis, which is comparable better off, from these areas to find work. So it seems that our region is always helping to pull us down in addition to the other reasons.
SCM-
I think one also must include the geography of the Nashville MSA (and any other city when comparing MSAs), both its physical footprint and its composition of numerous “centers” that at least economically are all but independent of the namesake city aside from shared use of the airport. To better illustrate the point, despite its rapid population growth, the population density of the Nashville MSA area is roughly half that of the Memphis MSA. Although I know it to be untrue, I have suggested (in jest) that while everyone may like Nashville, the people moving there apparently do not care for each other. What is actually occurring in Nashville is not the traditional center-spoke metropolitan area (Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc…) with an overwhelmingly dominant central city upon which the surrounding suburban hinterland is almost completely economically dependent. Instead we see a multi-centered region where as many commuters are driving from Davidson County to work in Williamson County as are committed to the reverse movement and where the number of people commuting from Montgomery County to work outside the MSA is 3 times greater than the number of residents of the same county commuting to Davidson County. This is also exemplified by the fact that only 1 in 2 jobs in that MSA are actually located in Davidson County. In many ways, it would be more apt to say Middle Tennessee is booming whereas Nashville has gone at a more modest pace. Middle Tennessee’s boom has been very much orchestrated at the state level.
In conjunction with economic development, the actual number of residents counted towards the Nashville MSA population total has increased due in at least small part from the enlargement of the MSA’s defined boundary from 1 county in 1950 to 14 counties by 2013. At least some of the growth that has occurred in places such as Lebanon, Murfreesboro and Spring Hill has occurred independent of growth in the central city. As another author mentioned, the automotive industry has invested heavily in Middle Tennessee which in turn has been completely dependent on enormous state tax subsidies made possible by economic development focus not just at the local or regional level, but the state level. Many of these surrounding counties were already focal points for their own economic development and resulting population growth before they were assigned to the same MSA sphere. If we apply the current metropolitan area boundary using 1950 census data we see that the Nashville MSA population was already just shy of the Memphis MSA population (approximately 80,000 short) and has roughly tripled while the Memphis MSA population (within its current defined boundary) has roughly doubled during the same timeframe. No, the real story is not necessarily about the quick yet hardly staggering growth that has occurred in Nashville- look to Charlotte for a truly amazing turnaround and the economic powerhouse that has emerged- but is far more about the incredible development realized by a dozen or so county seats and country crossroads in Middle Tennessee over the past 50 years.
All that to say and to echo Anon 4:21, the question then becomes not so much what is wrong with Memphis, but what is wrong with the surrounding region? Can a great city exist in the midst of an environ? Precedent says “yes” but as in all things the answer is much more complicated than that.
My 2 cents: The city of Memphis is losing residents because of its poor public school system. I live downtown. The demographics here is pretty much anyone without kids. When a young couple here gets pregnant, their idea is to stay while the kids are young. Then when the kids become 2 or 3 yrs old, they move out east, where the public education system is better. From their point of view, Memphis schools suck. Most young couples I know who choose to stay in 901 & move to Midtown, homeschool their kids or fork out the $$ for private school. Families save more in the long run by moving east (no need to pay tuition & mom can earn $$). So, I say, if Memphis wants to keep people, start with creating excellent public education in Memphis.
I spent several years working out of a hotel room in Nashville and the surrounding area. I know it is booming and has a lot of things gong on right now, but is VERY far form perfect. There is crime (although fewer murders and violent crimes, it still regularly appears in the top 25 most dangerous cities lists) sprawl is far worse than here, and traffic is rapidly getting worse. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know any of that listening to the pessimists that infest the Memphis Metro area. It seems that the best outcome for the Memphis area would be for all those old line pessimists to join the statistical flow and just leave. If you really are that miserable here (See Anonymous above), then please move along.
For those who are willing to look beyond just the problems, there is reason for optimism here, and much of it is coming from young professionals who are making an impact in areas like food and culture. Downtown housing and development is on the rise, and the young professions that an increasingly vibrant downtown can attract will be the ones who help to turn things around here. There are visionaries in this city, but they need more help and fresh ideas to overcome some of the entrenched issues that we all still deal with.
I’d like to add on to James’ comment above ( It seems that the best outcome for the Memphis area would be for all those old line pessimists to join the statistical flow and just leave. If you really are that miserable here).
I’ve long thought it’s going to take the demise/departure/whatever you want to call it of my generation (Boomer) and older for attitudes to really turn around. So much negativity comes out of long-timers in their 50s and 60s. There are many positive attributes to the Memphis area, and there are good things taking place here, that many simply refuse to acknowledge.
There’s an infectious enthusiasm among the younger generations (think Choose901) that’s re-writing the playbook for the area. Theirs is the way of the future. We could learn a thing or two from them.