Marketplace - Business opportunity and a tricky balance

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

As America’s population ages, so does its workforce. That’s why this week, Kai and ADP’s Nela Richardson are visiting Cumberland County, Tennessee, where a third of residents are 65 and older. In this episode, we talk to an exterminator, a part-time dance teacher, a hospital president and a minister-turned-shop owner to illustrate that  Cumberland’s aging population brings new opportunities — and challenges.

You know that saying, it's not how old you are, it's how old you feel? For the economy, it kind of is how old you are. From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdall. It is Tuesday, it's the day the 28th of January. Good as always to have you along everybody. This job, as I believe I've said before, takes one to some unexpected places. Five, six, ready, and right together, left together, right together, left. She keeps going faster and faster and faster and faster.

Man, this is hard. I would totally get lost. We start today in the middle of a line dancing class, because silly as it might seem, the people in this class are the driving force behind a changing economy. We kicked off our new series yesterday, The Age of Work, it's called, about how the demographic shifts happening here in the United States

and abroad are shaking up the global economy. And we started in Cumberland County, Tennessee. This project, we should tell you, is in partnership with ADP Research. They crunched the numbers for us. And they found that Cumberland County has one of the oldest workforces in the United States. And what we found there is a story about what happens to a place as the working age population becomes more and more outnumbered by retirees with time on their hands and money to spend. And if demographics are destiny, as economists like to say, what's happening in Cumberland County

is eventually going to play out in every part of this economy. Line dancing at 9.30 on a Thursday morning. I don't know. I just don't know. Suffice it to say, I will not be line dancing. ADP chief economist Nela Richardson and I are outside a library in Fairfield Glade. The median age here is about 70. suffice it to say I will not be line dancing. ADP Chief Economist Neela Richardson and I are outside a library in Fairfield Glade. The median age here is about 70. The library

is home to that line dancing class that we started with. And we're here because the people in this class are driving the demographic change in Carmelin County. Hi, I'm Kai. Nice to see you. How are you? Hi, Kai. Nice to meet you. Good morning. Sorry about the microphones. Okay. Morning, I'm Kai. Nice to see you. How are you? Hi Kai. Nice to meet you. Good morning. Sorry about the microphones. Okay. Morning, I'm Kai. That's Adria Cook.

She is 67 years old and like pretty much everybody in Fairfield Glade, she and her husband Wendell are transplants, moved here from New Jersey in 2020. Jersey girl. I'm at Ohio State. Oh, there you go. That completes the search. How did we come to be standing outside

the multi-purpose building, the library here in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee? Because I teach line dancing here. Of course you do. Yes, and I teach ballroom in the afternoon. Dancing, in case you can't tell, is kinda Adrienne's thing. Wendell is basically her assistant. I have the radio on and we'll be having breakfast

and I'll just get up and start, oh, we do a dance to that, and I'll just start doing it. And when we built the house, everybody's like, man cave upstairs? I'm like, no, dance room. And you have a partner. You have a built-in partner, which is fantastic too. That's the hardest part. It is. It is. How did you come to teach line dancing here? I taught line dancing back in New Jersey and ballroom and swing and Latin and country and I taught line dancing back in New Jersey and ballroom and swing and Latin and country and- Wow.

Yes, all of it. We both did. And then when we came down here and we started taking line dance classes, teacher, and she'll be here, she's 87 years old. And she was like, that's it, I've had it, it's yours. We met outside the library

because a yoga class was wrapping up inside. When Adrienne and Wendell first moved to Fairfield Glade, they got a welcome packet full of pages and pages of clubs and classes and other activities, about 75 of them by our count. My neighbor's in a German club and she plays bridge, but I play mahjong, he plays pickleball, he golfs, and sometimes I pick a ball and we dance,

and those are the things we're into. Once yoga let out, we went inside so that Adria could set up for class. There's a table for people to sign in and pay their five bucks. It covers the cost of renting the room and maybe gives Adrienne some pocket money if there's anything left over.

She spends about 10 minutes setting up, getting all her gear on. Okay, wait, sorry. We have to talk about this. You're putting a camel back on. Why? Because when I call every single step to every single song for two hours, I get dry. Oh. So I have to drink and I tell them it's vodka.

Honestly. You sound like a little bit of a taskmaster. No. You say that in the gentlest possible way. But if I don't call the dance, they stop. They don't know what to do, right? Right, so I call it. But it's a test, you know?

We all forget. We're getting older, you know? All 25 or so people in class were women except for Wendell, mid-50s to 80 plus, including the 87-year-old former teacher that Adrienne mentioned who took her spot in the back corner Adri of course was front and center with her camel back and headset with a microphone so that everybody could hear her calling out every single step as promised Don't our friends want to join us? Yeah, no ma'am. I'm good. I think Neela's gonna join you. You can join us. Come on! Come on!

Neela for the record, a much better sport than me. She did join the class. She nailed the moves, which honestly were more complicated than I had expected. The group moved back and forth across the room, turned to face every wall in turn, helped each other remember the combinations, sometimes looking to Wendell for backup. Adrienne called out modifications for the women she knows

have a hip or a knee issue. How's it feel? Good. Where's your weight? That's right. Yes. After the hour of class, she teaches another second hour. Some women pay a few bucks more and stay for both.

You guys were great. Seriously, it was fabulous. Thank you. Thanks for the lesson. I appreciate it. No problem with you. Just say you're going to the next dance for you. Okay. Thanks. You'll let me know. That was amazing. It was great. It was great. And the best part was there were some who were like totally into it, knew everything, and were actually, you know, jamming. And then there were some that were trying to keep up. I have to say, having done that dance, at first I was like, wow, this is really slow.

And then as the song progresses, you realize that your heart is pounding a little bit and you're getting into the flow of it and to do that for two Hours and imagine being like 80 right? I know the choreography the brain remembering the steps looking around it actually is this mind-body Connection that I could see how that would be so beneficial. It was really cool. It was cool to see actually This is life in Fairfield glade and there are thousands more retirees like these line dancers, each with their own clubs or classes or organizations that they're involved with. This population is changing Cumberland County's demographics and with it, shifting the local economy.

We talked yesterday about the influx of retirees driving up housing costs here and increasing demands on local businesses that don't have enough younger, working-age people to fill jobs to meet that demand. But they present a business opportunity to these retirees do if you're in the right industry. Mountain top, fabrics and more. It's like a home. It's like a house. it's like a house.

Not like a house, it is a house. We're about 20 miles from the line dancing library in Fairfield Glade in a rural part of Crossville. Homes on acres of land, some working farms with cattle and the like. We're off a one lane road and up a long windy driveway. Hi, good morning. Good morning.

Wow, this is definitely fabrics and more. Hello. I am doing mechanical work this morning, putting together equipment. David Mahan is the owner of Mountaintop Fabrics and More. He was in the middle of building a magazine rack when we showed up. David grew up on this property back when the whole thing was a dairy farm. He's 59, recently retired from four plus decades in the ministry. I've quitted for about 25 years. My dream was always one day to do something like this, but never thought it'd be a possibility. And so when I stepped down and I asked, just jokingly

asked my mother who still lives here, where we raised her. We should say here, we're in your mom's garage. We're in my mother's garage. She built this. And I said jokingly, I said, won't you let me have that front part to open up a fabric store? And my mother and younger brother who lives with her says, well, sure, well, he ain't doing nothing with it. So it was a dream come true because I wouldn't have the overhead, you know, it's your mother.

You're not paying your mom rent? I can pay her when I want to. Well, that must be nice. She's just glad to mom rent? I can pay her when I want to. She's just glad to have me on this side of the county, I guess. So I just started ordering fabric and opened up the very end of August, the first of September, and it's been nonstop since then.

We visited in November, so the store had only been open for about two months. And first thing on a Wednesday morning, there were two customers walking around, taking it all in. Doesn't actually feel like a garage at all. It's big, it's well lit, with David's quilts covering the walls, and lots of tables with fabric and patterns

and sewing machines. He said customers usually spend an hour in the store and that a lot of them own what are called long arm quilting machines. And those start, a small economical to start in point is 12,000. Oh, $12,000? $12,000.

A typical quilting machine will run you anywhere from 20 to $60,000. This sounds like more than a hobby then. Do they do it just for the fun of it? They do it for the fun of it. Now we have some that do quilting for other people and that make money, but you know, being a retirement community, we have a lot of people who come in looking for fabrics and stuff to quilt.

Right. How did you know the market would be here? My daughter-in-law who is from Traverse City, Michigan lives in Clarksville and she's in the cosmetic industry and she's in the high end. She goes, so what kind of studies did you do? I said, I just knew there was a lot of quilters here, so I just opened up a quilt store. That was it. David saw the demographics in town and found a business opportunity.

I know of three quilting gills and quilting gills are women who are part of a group. They come together once a month. They meet, they sew together. And again, a lot of these people are in multiple gills. But one gill has 240 some people. One gill has a hundred and eighty some people. So we have a large quilting guild society here because of retirees. Is it easy to start a business in this county? It's not easy. And the only reason I was able to do this, because I'm just a middle class guy is because I don't have much overhead.

To rent a place in Crossville is extremely high. You're looking at at least $100 to $150 a square foot in retail space. So then when you spend that much money, then you got that much overhead, it's really a struggle for a small business person to stay running. It's worth a mention here that you're a retiree yourself.

Well, in a sense. I mean, you are, right? I'm only 59, but yeah. You did the pastoring thing for 40 years. I'm in the downhill slope, okay? Hush your mouth. Hush your mouth. But it's, you're looking for and you have found a way to keep yourself engaged and interested.

Yes. I almost see this more of a second career than a retirement. You're growing a business. It is. And of course I know it's going to be at least six months to a year before I begin to turn a profit. I want to let you get back to business because this lady is ready to check out.

She's been very patient with us. She's been walking around with a handful of stuff for 20 minutes. Yeah, you're getting into my profit margin here, okay? I know, I know, I know. I'm sorry about that. Like David said, owning this shop was his dream. The retirees and their money to spend and being able to work out of his mom's garage helped that dream come true.

Coming up, how the aging population is affecting another business in town. Community hospital, Seoul Community Provider. We're anywhere from... Sorry, soul community provider, you're it around here. We are it. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow industrials gained 136 today, 3 tenths percent finished at 44,850 did the blue chips. The Nasdaq rose 391 points, about 2 percent 19,733. The S&P 500 picked up 55.9%, 6,067. Tech stocks bounce back after yesterday's rout.

Nvidia recovered 8.9%, today Broadcom improved 2.6%. Oracle grew about 3.6% today. The Fed started its two-day meeting on interest rates. This morning announcement coming tomorrow, as it always does, and we will have it for you. It is worth taking a minute here to explain, I think, why we didn't blow up the show today. Why we didn't put the months of work that we put into this Tennessee series on the shelf and pivot instead to the President of the United States unilaterally pausing trillions

of dollars in federal spending. And it's a fair question, but here's why. If we learned anything in the first Trump administration, it's that losing focus every time the White House does something just isn't a constructive way to cover this economy, and it's not what this program does best. Marketplace exists to help listeners understand

why something's happening and why it matters to them over the long haul. So today, we decided we were gonna stick to the plan. You're listening to Marketplace. Hey, it's Kai. My minivan and I, as I've said on the radio, have logged a lot of miles with Marketplace. Luckily, it's still running, you know, pretty well.

But if your car doesn't drive as well as it used to, listen up, it can still help drive Marketplace. Luckily, it's still running, you know, pretty well. But if your car doesn't drive as well as it used to, listen up. It can still help drive Marketplace. When you donate your old car or truck, we'll use the proceeds to support the great programs you hear every day. Start your vehicle donation at marketplace.org slash vehicle. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. Not far from Crossville's downtown is a set of buildings that takes up a whole block and it's a place everybody in Cumberland County is going to wind up going at some point. Welcome to Cumberland Medical Center here in Crossville, Tennessee. I'm Randy Davis. I'm the Chief Administrative Officer and President here. Randy's been

running this hospital for two years now. Community hospital, Seoul Community Provider, we're anywhere from... Sorry, Seoul Community Provider, you're it around here. We are it. Wow. And so because of that, outpatient services in terms of things like, hey, come on. You need the elevator? Let's get the elevator. Yeah, let's get the elevator.

And we brought you in right at the fire drill. We're having the fire drill. This one place kind of shows all the things that demographics can do from increasing demand for certain services to shifting the workforce. The fire drill, we should say stopped once we got up to Randy's office. Okay. A little bit quieter. So again, welcome, but yes, social community provider, which means that even from a lab medical imaging standpoint,

everybody comes here for all the outpatient services. So if a physician puts an order in, you're coming to us. How is overall community health here? Overall community health here is kind of classic, Appalachia. So you've got a heavy tobacco utilization. We are one of the counties that are in the opioid settlement due to the overprescription of opioids in the area. So we've got a lot of addiction.

Overall access to care has always been a challenge in this area. Not enough primary care physicians. challenge in this area, not enough primary care physicians. Cumberland Medical is the only hospital within about a 40 minute drive. It's licensed to run 189 beds. It's typically got around 100 staff. It's part of Covenant Health, which is a hospital system based out of Knoxville. And the people who work here, all about 800 of them, are on the receiving end of the demand for new medical services as Cumberland County gets older.

What we're looking at in this series of stories is what's happening here as retirees move into Fairfield Glade, right? And you have people in Crossville. And so the question is somebody retiring into Fairfield Glade from Chicago Who's three blocks from 17 different kinds of medical centers right comes out here? And are you able to meet their needs we're absolutely not And so you know what they're used to one is choice, right? So we're it and We are not have able to have that full breadth and depth of services that they're used to seeing in that major metropolitan area How do you delegate resources? So you have a more affluent Fairfield Glade resident versus a traditional Crossville resident

and they're both aging. Right. How do you know how to resource your care? How do you make those decisions? Yeah, so first and foremost you have to satisfy the immediate needs of your immediate community. It's the reason that we're here, both historically and currently. When you're starting to look out at these growing communities like Fairfield Glade, there are a lot of times that I'm sitting in front of them saying, I need to satisfy my primary care physician need in Crossville proper before I begin really trying to get aggressive and putting primary care additional primary care physician resources out here.

This is one of the tensions that Randy's got running this facility. There's the growing population in Fairfield Glade that wants more medical care and is willing to spend to get it. But he's also got the people of Crossville with less money to spend but more acute needs. What we're going to do is walk over into kind of the old original portion of the hospital that's going to have the ER, all of our outpatient services, as well as our cath lab. We have a 12-bed ICU, which is nearly always at capacity. Really? Yes. The hospital opened here in 1950.

It's had lots of renovations and expansions since as the population has grown. In fact, you've got to go outside to get around. So we'll turn right on the sidewalk right here, and what it is is going to be the ambulance entrance, and then right beside that is the main ER. Are there any nursing homes nearby? There are. There's several. Always working with them, too, to maintain good partnerships right beside that is the many are are there any nursing homes there are there's uh... several

always working with them to maintain good partnerships because i need to get patients that need to go to nursing home discharge to the nursing home in a timely manner because i need that that is in the right it's not just a capacity problem it's a staffing problem our physician base is uh...

uh... for the most part. And that is because even as I'm doing the physician recruitment, you've got a lot that are saying, look, I'm 55. I want to work for 10 or 15 more years and I love where you are. They're looking at it strategically, but they do have retirement on their minds.

They're saying, this is where I want to retire. You have a lens on this community that I think is very unique. Can you speak to the complexity of aging, especially in a rural community like this one? Right. So I do think that the rural communities are very unique in that. And so you're going to see females during their child rearing period of time in their life and they're going to be pretty aggressive users of health care during that. The guys, no. Once the mom's no longer responsible for making sure they get the appropriate care, they disappear

from the health care system. You will not see those males reappear in the health care setting until there's an acute illness or you're not going to see them again until they hit the age of 65 and they become Medicare eligible. And then we begin trying to piece together this horrific health and wellness plan for someone who's basically been absent from the healthcare system during that period of time. That's just the way it works. That's the baseline reality for this hospital.

What the Crossville population needs isn't going to change, no matter how much the customer base in Fairfield Glade grows. It's a different consumer of healthcare. They are going to, in fact, they get upset. I can't get in for my preventative appointment. I have to have my primary care physician appointment. My mammogram is done on time. My colonoscopy gets done. It's just, it's a different clientele.

It's easy to think that that clientele is just affecting this one hospital or quilt shop or line dancing class, bringing business opportunities to this one place. But really, this is a series about how any place changes when the balance between retirees and people still in the workforce tips. Tomorrow on the program, two service providers that focus exclusively on helping the Crossville population. That's coming up in our next installment of The Age of Work. We visited a whole lot of small businesses while we were in Tennessee.

Not all of them make it to air. Obviously, we've only got so much time, but here's another one. My name is John Barnwell and I am the owner of Cumberland Exterminating. When I was young, I dropped out of school at an early age and got a GED, went to work early, did not know what I was going to do with my life. I was in a rock and roll band with a guy that owned a pest control company. This was in 1990, so I worked for him part time. He was wanting to get out of the business. So I owned that business for about 10 years. Went through some hard times in my life, drug addiction, a lot of terrible things.

After I got my act together, I worked and managed another pest control company for a couple of years, and then I started Cumberland Exterminating. And when I went to open up the bank account in 2010 for Cumberland Exterminating, that's where I met my wife Tina. We have about 6,000 customers right now, which is about 10% of the county. And so if you don't have the personnel to do that, it can lead to big trouble. Fairfield Glade is a big area of growth for us because so many people are moving in and we have so many customers in that area anyway. Word of mouth is wonderful. We talk every day to people from California,

New York, Illinois, every where. Florida, people that are moving here, they need a report because they're closing on a house. So we can see the growth firsthand in here because we do so many inspections on new transactions for real estate. Our son, he's in the military right now and he's planning on coming on board with us when he gets out. He's actually a diver in the Army. He is my key to retirement. John Barnwell, Cumberland Exterminating, Crossville, Tennessee. to see.

This final note on the way out today, remember at that line dancing class how Adrienne mentioned the 87-year-old former teacher? Her name is Mary Ann Rood and she still comes to class every week. She's actually filling in right now while Adriria and Wendell are on vacation. When we were there back in November, we caught up with her right before class. Do you have to go warm up before you dance? I don't want you to get hurt.

No. You don't? You have to warm up. Come on. No. What do you think it is? All it is is you're just moving around. Is there a favorite dance that you have?

Is there a dance that just? Yes. September in the Rain. September in the Rain. September in the Rain. Yeah, she does it the second hour that I taught. Wait, the class is more than one hour? It's two hours? Two.

Wow. When I started out, I taught three hours. Really? So, people are getting soft now. That's what I hear you saying. That's it. That's it, baby. That's what I hear you saying.

87 years old, line dances twice a week, walks three miles a day every day. She doesn't dance. Our digital and on-demand team includes Carrie Barber, Jordan Mangy, Dylan Mienten and Janet Nguyen, Olga Oxman, Ellen Rolfus, Virginia K. Smith, and Tony Wagner. Francesca Levy is the executive director of digital and on-demand. And I'm Kai Rizdall. We will see you tomorrow, everybody.