Cooper: The path to job growth in Chattanooga, Hamilton County

A employee of Volkswagen, which is one of many local employers likely to need more and more skilled or educated employees, inspects items in the trunk of a vehicle at the authomobile assembly plant in Chattanooga.
A employee of Volkswagen, which is one of many local employers likely to need more and more skilled or educated employees, inspects items in the trunk of a vehicle at the authomobile assembly plant in Chattanooga.

Experts can slice and dice reasons or assign blame for comparably slow job growth and racial income disparities in the Chattanooga metropolitan area and Hamilton County, but two salient factors can change both.

Those factors, which easily can be seen as one because they're so closely related, are education and job training.

Although comparable job numbers and racial income disparity were presented to the Chattanooga City Council last week by a member of a group that has been studying the county over the past year for the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce's five-year strategic plan for economic development and talent initiatives, the facts have not been unknown to the city and county.

The six-county Chattanooga metropolitan area saw healthy job growth (8.2 percent) between 2012 and 2017, and both Hamilton County and Chattanooga can be said to be in excellent financial shape, but the metro area trails the country as a whole in job growth and other mid-sized cities in the region and nation.

The U.S., over the same time period, grew 9.2 percent, and metro areas similar in size to Chattanooga experienced growth from 8.3 percent (Knoxville) to 29.7 percent (Provo, Utah), according to information compiled by Avalanche Consulting.

Now comparing some mid-sized cities, like Provo, and Boise, Idaho, to Chattanooga, is like comparing apples to oranges. The cities don't have similar demographics, workforces, histories and climates. But studying all growing mid-sized cities can offer visioning ideas about what is working and what is possible.

As to racial income disparities, the difference in median household income among white, Hispanic and black homes is stark but somewhat deceptive. Household income for black Chattanoogans, according to 2017 figures from the United States Census Bureau, is $28,000, but it is almost 50 percent higher for Hispanics at $41,000 and is double that for whites at $56,000.

Part of that disparity can be traced to the fact household income includes those in the home who are working. It stands to reason if two adults - married or not - are working, household income will be higher than in those households in which one person is working.

In Chattanooga, 14.6 percent of households are headed by a female with no husband present, and 3.6 percent of households are headed by a male with no wife present. In other words, 18.2 percent of Chattanooga households - nearly a fifth - are headed by one adult. In addition, in 39.9 percent of Chattanooga households, the householder lives alone.

Among blacks, only 24 percent are married, the lowest of all demographic groups listed in the 2017 Census American Community Survey, and 50.8 percent have never been married. Hispanics (54 percent) and whites (44.3 percent) have much higher percentages of marriage and thus have greater chances of having two working adults in the house and, in turn, higher household incomes.

But married or single, black, white or Hispanic, the evidence is clear that the higher the educational attainment, the higher the individual earnings, the higher the labor force participation and the lower the poverty.

In Chattanooga, for instance, the average annual earnings for someone with less than a high school degree are $18,159. They rise to $23,897 with at least a high school degree, $43,312 with at least a bachelor's degree and $58,498 with a graduate degree.

For those with less than a high school degree, only 49.8 percent are part of the labor force. But that rises to 66.5 percent for those with a high school degree, 81 percent for those with some college and 86.4 percent for those with a bachelor's degree or higher.

The poverty rate in Chattanooga is highest (39.51 percent) for those with less than a high school degree, declines to 18.30 percent for those with a high school degree, 12.39 percent for those with some college and 5.79 percent for those with at least a bachelor's degree.

If those statistics don't paint an accurate enough picture, the Chattanooga 2.0 movement made clear from its start more than four years ago that the family-wage jobs of today and tomorrow cannot be filled by a local workforce without better educational attainment. The jobs will be filled, to be sure, but they will not be able to be filled by Chattanoogans lacking education or job training.

Clearly, the more educated and trained the workforce, the more chance the city and county also will have of landing new businesses hungry for skilled employees and the easier it will be to make up for the jobs that will one day be replaced by artificial intelligence and changing markets.

This is a process that will be spurred by an improving Hamilton County Schools system but not one that should be placed on the backs of this - or any - school district alone. Governments, businesses and philanthropic organizations also have parts to play. Families and individuals also must grasp the concept of responsibility.

It's not fantasy that married or two-person households fare better. It's not magic that the more education one has, the more one will earn. And it's not smoke and mirrors that the less education one has, the higher the chances of living in poverty.

The Chattanooga area can grow more jobs, and area households can earn more, but they won't happen without individual and family initiative.

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