Ralph Schultz, President and CEO of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, recently shared information about job growth and economic development in Williamson County and the Middle Tennessee region with local leaders at Franklin Tomorrow’s quarterly Breakfast with the Mayors. Because the mayors in Williamson County and the region work together on planning for the future, this area has continued to see both population and job growth during the pandemic. In recent months traffic patterns have almost returned to normal, as have the number of jobs. However, Schultz and the mayors agreed that growth must be planned for it to be beneficial.
“Williamson County is blessed with public servants with lots of forethought,” said Schultz. He went on to say that future thinking must include workforce and economic development, transportation, housing and infrastructure.
Growth is coming to Williamson County, and has been for a number of years. According to Franklin Mayor Ken Moore, the city has been seeing at least 2,000 people moving there per year. What is drawing people to the area is the quality of life, but also job growth.
According to Schultz, Middle Tennessee has seen the development of 500,000 new jobs in the last 30 years, with 224,000 of those jobs being added in the last five years. And there was a 43% increase in new job growth announcements during the worst of the pandemic in 2020.
Much of that growth has been in supply chain management. Logistics has long been important to the area, but it is growing. According to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce’s most recent jobs study, there is a significant gap between the number of jobs available and the number of people currently working in the industry, especially as truck drivers.
According to the most recent Nashville Chamber of Commerce workforce study, “Jobs in [logistics] experienced 24.1% growth in the region between 2014 and 2019, over 2.4 times the national growth rate of 10.1%. Occupational concentration or an LQ of 1.28 indicates a workforce availability 28% above the national average.”
Healthcare and Information Technology are also continuing to have a shortage of workers, with the pandemic making it harder to recruit healthcare workers due to burnout. The largest shortage is in nurses and nursing assistants. The workforce study noted that, “Health care related jobs …experienced 11.3% growth in the region between 2014 and 2019, over 1.3 times the national growth rate of 8.7%.”
There are skills gaps, and 31.8% of respondents to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce Vital Signs study felt that they need additional education in order to advance in their career. To address this, 36.5% of employers offer on the job training.
Besides educational gaps, there are two other trends that may potentially affect job growth, not enough housing and not enough child care.
Local mayors understand how important it is to ensure the county and all the cities have plans for how to house these new members of the community.
The number of available houses is going down, driving process up. Aging housing stock is going down, driving prices up. And new stock cannot be built fast enough or at pre-pandemic prices due to the cost of lumber and the lack of workers. Twenty one percent of residents in the Middle Tennessee area consider housing a cost burden that on average eats up 30% of the household budget.
Child care is also harder to find, as the pandemic forced more than 750 childcare facilities to close across the state according to Schultz. Although, as pandemic worries ease, new ones are opening.
“Companies moving here are not looking at [city or county] lines,” said Mayor Moore. “They are looking at the region…It is critical as we move forward with jobs…we must work together or we are going to have real issues.”
