Welcome to Cumberland County, Tennessee, the “future” of the U.S. economy
Welcome to Cumberland County, Tennessee, the “future” of the U.S. economy
Just outside a pickleball court in Cumberland County, Tennessee, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal asked ADP chief economist Nela Richardson an existential question: “Why are we here?” he said. “We are here because Cumberland County is the future,” she replied.
ADP is a payroll and human resources tech company that processes payroll for more than 40 million workers globally. ADP research funded this reporting. According to ADP’s data, Cumberland County has one of the oldest labor forces in the United States.
Cumberland County is mostly rural and sits about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. Around a third of its residents are 65 years or older, compared to just 18% in the U.S. as a whole. So why is this place the future?
“If you look at people, demographics, right? And look at the trajectory over the next 10 years,” said Richardson, “what you’ll see is that we in the U.S. are a population that is aging.”
As people of the baby boom generation get older and birth rates have fallen, a bigger and bigger chunk of the population is hitting retirement age. Prime-age workers — that’s people between 25 and 54 years old — helped drive the U.S. economy in the 20th century, but now make up a shrinking share of the U.S. labor force.
As Richardson recently wrote in an ADP research blog post, the expanding ranks of retirees “has implications for the entire economy.”
“Economists love to say this: ‘Demographics are destiny,'” she told Ryssdal. “And so what Cumberland [County] represents is that tension between an aging population and a workforce who is struggling to keep up.”
Cumberland County is our first stop in a new series “The Age of Work,” about how demographic shifts are shaking up the U.S. and global economies.
Fairfield Glade
One reason that Cumberland County has such a high concentration of older workers is because of places like Fairfield Glade. It’s a retirement community, dotted with lakes, golf courses and other amenities.
Mary Jo Paige, the director of marketing for Fairfield Glade Community Club, a homeowners association, said the area attracts retirees looking for a place with a relatively temperate climate and low cost of living. It has 9,500 residents. “Over the last 11 years that I’ve been here, we’ve grown 32%,” she said.
According to local relator Jeff Armes, homes in Fairfield Glade range from $200,000 to $1.5 million. “I love the buyers,” Armes said. “The buyers are the happy ones — they’re finally getting to be retired and be kids again.”
One of the tensions we’re exploring this week is how those retirees — with time and money on their hands — have changed Cumberland County’s economy.
On one hand, they create demand for certain services, like construction, lawn care and even quilting supplies. But their presence has also contributed to an increased cost of living for the people who were already there.
Crossville
Crossville, the seat of Cumberland County, is just down the highway from Fairfield Glade. But it has fewer bocce ball courts and lakefront mansions. There, there are more duplexes and mobile home parks.
The median income in Crossville is around $50,000 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and almost 20% of residents live in poverty. That’s more than double the rate in Fairfield Glade.
“We’re tight,” said Melissa Ellis, a musician and mom of four who lives in Crossville. “You know, we have grocery prices that are way high. Our cars break down.”
“I remember for a while there, if we made it to the end of the month with just like a little bit left in our account, we were like, ‘Woohoo, we made it with 20 bucks!’”
Despite Ellis and her husband both having master’s degrees — and her working multiple jobs to help make ends meet — she said she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to retire, or even buy a home in Crossville.
“I don’t know what it’s gonna look like,” she said. “At this point, I don’t think there’s gonna be a retirement.”
Click the audio player above to hear the stories.
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