Marketplace - Demographics are destiny

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

It’s a demographic reality: The U.S. has an aging workforce. That’s gonna affect our economy, big time. In this episode, Kai takes a trip to Cumberland County, Tennessee, with payroll firm ADP’s chief economist, Nela Richardson. It’s home to one of the oldest labor forces in the country — around a third of residents are older than 65 — meaning this rural nook of Tennessee can give us a glimpse into the future.

Yes, there was market news today and we will get to it. But you know what's even more important to this economy? How old everybody's getting. From American public media, this is Market Class. In Los Angeles, I'm Colin Rizdall. It is Monday, today the 27th of January. Good as always to have you with us, everybody. A couple of months ago in Cumberland County, Tennessee, right next to a well-used pickleball court, I met up with a colleague.

Hey, how are you? Good to see you. You look fresh from traveling. Holy cow. We're all like beat up. That is ADP chief economist, Neela Richardson. Here we are. I'm seeing my first pickleball game ever, by the way. Why are we here? Here meaning rural Tennessee. Cumberland County, Tennessee? We are here because Cumberland County is the future Cumberland County is about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville population a hair under 65,000 and about a third of them are

65 years old or older so how then is this place the future? So if you look at people demographics and Look at the trajectory over the next 10 years What you'll see is that we in the US are a population that is aging yep, we're aging because boomers are hitting retirement age over 65 and because younger people are not having children at the same rate, which leads to places like Cumberland. ADP handles payroll for more than 40 million workers all over the planet, which means it is

sitting on reams of data about workers in this economy and everywhere else. And I should say ADP Research is funding this project. And we asked Neela to crunch some numbers for us on the places with the oldest workers in the United States. Cumberland County, with a median worker age of 47, was right near the top of that list. That's why we're here. The data brought us here. I think I know why it matters, but you're the trained economist in the conversation.

Why does it matter? It changes the economy. Economists love to say this demographics are destiny. When you have more people who are retirement age than who are going into working age, it changes consumption patterns, deficits, The list is endless. And so what Cumberland represents is that tension between an aging population and a workforce who is struggling to keep up.

Demographers will tell you, should you ask, that the United States has hit peak 65, with just about 4 million people reaching retirement age every year. It is the biggest waiver of retirements in history and that tension that Neela mentioned between an aging population the workforce supporting them is spilling over into debates about entitlement spending and Deficits and immigration and the competitiveness of US businesses in a word about the future of this economy We're gonna get to the global part of this in a word about the future of this economy. We're going to get to the global part of this in a minute, but it's not just here, right?

No. In fact, if you look at any advanced economy, whether it's Europe, China, Japan, you see the same demographics at play. In fact, in Japan, they're even further along this trajectory, where they have older workers and retiring populations being supported by an increasingly shrinking prime-age workforce. Now over the next 30, 40 years, those prime-age workers will be in Africa, in South Asia, no longer in advanced economies, but in developing economies, some of them very, very poor. Prime-age workers, what Neil is talking about here, are people between 25 and 54.

They helped drive the American economy in the 20th century. And that group has made up a shrinking share of the US labor force since the 1990s. We're not even in the top 10 anymore. All right. So let's use that to bring it back home, right? If Africa, Southeast Asia, traditionally poor economies have the demographic upper hand in the next half century or so, right? What's that going to mean for us? Well, one thing it's going to mean is we're seeing

more and more workers work for a longer period of time. They have to. Now, there's some good things that are it's going to mean is we're seeing more and more workers work for a longer period of time. They have to. Now, there's some good things that are underlying that. Health outcomes are better. People are living longer. They're being healthier into retirement. So for some people, this is not a bad life.

But in terms of the economy, when you have more retirees on the backs of fewer workers, it leads to higher inflation, unless there's some way to get more labor supply when there's so much labor demand. Which is an immigration question. That's one of many. Okay. So in the next two days, we're going to talk to a bunch of people. What are you looking for?

What are the things that are on your mind as we set out on this reporting trip? First, I'm looking for a beautiful place to retire. Right. You are younger than I am, Jill Richardson. I was scouting out that. And I will just say, I'm not thinking about it. So don't you dare.

This is a really pretty place. It's gorgeous, right? Secondly, I'm looking for how people thrive in retirement. This is not just an economic issue. This is a quality of life issue. So if a community reorients itself to its aging population, what happens to the younger folks who are still here? Schools, extracurricular activities, housing.

How does a community solve that problem? That's why I said immigration is not a singular solution to all the issues that come up when you talk about aging and demographics. We came to Cumberland County to explore what happens to a place when working age people get outnumbered. And we thought we were going to find stories about a gradually graying rural community

with young people leaving and older people forced to keep working. What we found, though, is much more complicated. And if demographics are destiny, then the dynamics at play here now are going to affect decisions that policy makers and business owners and the rest of us make every single day and in time are going to transform every part of this economy and beyond. This is the start of a new series that we're calling the Age of Work about how the demographic shifts happening here and abroad are shaking up the global economy.

Our first stop is about 100 yards down the road from those pickleball courts at a community center. Ooh, it's nice in here. It's a little boomy though, a little echoey. How are you? I'm Eli Richardson. Hi, I'm Mary Jo Page. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. Hi, Mary Jo, Kyle Rosendahl, nice to see you. Hi, nice to meet you. Mary Jo Page is the marketing director of. Hi Mary Jo, Kyle Resnall. Nice to see you. Hi, nice to meet you. Mary Jo Page is the marketing director of the Fairfield Glade Community Club. It's a homeowners association, but a really big one. You want to come back? Yeah, but actually, first wait, can you, I just saw this map over here.

Okay. Can you tell me where we are on this thing? Yes. Just, I need to orient myself. We are right here. To orient you, I have to explain that Fairfield Glade is a retirement community with about 9,500 residents 10 or so miles from Crossville, the county seat. Well, it's 12,000 acres, so it's a big place. Lots of lakes and lots of golf courses. Yeah, 11 lakes,

5 golf courses. Well, thank you. Yeah, we love it here. We've got a constant flow of people that are falling in love with Fairfield Glade and ultimately want to live here. It says the marketing person. Alright, let's go. Something you should know about Mary Jo? She is always selling Fairfield Glade. These are our ballrooms. There's three of them.

On the way to her office, she walked us past gymnasiums. There's pickleball players. Oh, you can hear the pickleball through the doors. A cafe. This is an Olympic-sized pool. as past gymnasiums, a cafe, and then showed us into her plushly furnished office. Mary Jo's been working in advertising for decades. She's been in charge of marketing here at Fairfield Glade since 2013. And like a lot of people you find here, she's not originally from Tennessee.

Well, I grew up in the Chicago area originally, but I lived in Florida longer than I lived in the Chicago area. But I got down there and I loved it. And you either love that or you don't. My husband hated it. So we're what you call halfbacks. Have you heard that terminology? What are we're halfbacks?

Halfbacks are people that live in the Midwest, the Northeast, move to Florida, decide it's not for them, and they go halfway back. They come halfway back. That's great. Because of those halfbacks and other retirees just looking to escape northern winters, the median age in Fairfield Glade is almost 70. Over the last 11 years that I've been here, we've grown 32%. I'm curious what happened during the pandemic.

That's when the remote work started. And when the remote work started with people, they were like, why in the world would I want to stay in California? No offense. That they were saying that. And then they were like, we'll come here. We can remote work. We can hike, we can remote work,

we can hike, we can do all these things outside where you don't really have to worry about human contact. Because remember how strange it was there for a while? When projecting 10 years from now, is there ever a point where it starts to change in character when there's so many people, maybe too many people coming? I think it's been very measured growth that we've been able to handle. And I suppose if you really were anti-growth and you just don't want change, like some of the folks where I live currently are,

they don't like the change. Is the labor force there to support that growth as well? I hope we're gonna develop that. Really, I do. I know hospitality, I know the state is really focused on that too, because our number two industry is tourism in Tennessee. I'm really anxious for you to tour the area.

We will, we're going out tomorrow. Mary Jo has to project confidence about the future of Fairfield Glade. That is her job. But you can tell the workforce is on her mind. A lot of the people who live here in Fairfield Glade don't work nine to five. Some take shifts at the community center or the racket club. They get free golf in return and many of them do volunteer work.

But this is a community where most residents are well past their peak working years. As we promised Mary Jo the next morning, we took a tour. Kai, what's happening? Welcome to paradise. There we go. Are you loving it? Are you digging it? It's gonna rain today though. I was told it's nice weather. It is gonna rain. Look around. If you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes.

Alright. That's local realtor Jeff Arms. What kind of car are you driving? My four-door truck. All right. Silverado, just like Dale Earnhardt. Just like Dale Earnhardt. Neela and I climbed into his truck.

Riding shotgun with you. And let him show us around. These are our brand new bocce ball courts. Really exciting for our retirement community here. We drove through leafy neighborhoods of ranch homes looking out over lakes and golf courses. Lots of nature, lots of deer. You guys tell me or I'll just keep on rambling.

You're not gonna put that in it, are you? You're doing it, well, I don't know. You're gonna edit that part out, right? Depends on how you do it, pal. We noticed quite a few out of state flags too. People repping the San Francisco 49ers, then Ohio State Buckeyes, and other teams far from Tennessee. You've lived here for 25 years.

You live in Fairfield, Glenn? Yes, sir. Where'd you come when you were, like, 25? Yeah, well, actually, yeah, I just graduated from college. I went to turf grass school and started selling the dream eventually. The reason we're driving around is to get a sense of how Cumberland County is changing. The typical person moving to Fairfield Glade, the kind of people that Jeff takes on tours like this one, are older and wealthier than the local population.

So what is the typical home sell for in Fairfield? Fairfield Glade, the prices range from $200,000 to a million and a half. That's a big range. A million and a half gets you a lot around here, I bet. Oh, it does. And now at one time, before COVID, before inflation, and before supply chains and whatnot, people were building houses down here coming from California or from Chicago or someplace like that.

And they were getting three times the house they could buy where they were. Now, we've caught up to the rest of the world, but you're still your million dollars. And as far as the taxes go, Tennessee's wonderful climate for your retirement money. Yeah, I was looking at taxes and some of the homes for sale in Crossville and they're low. I'm from New Jersey so I'll position it that way but they're what a couple thousand on a 500 thousand dollar? A thousand per 300 and now this is we're speaking very generally. I'm not a I'm not a there's one of our little mountain views from the golf course. Fairfield Glade kind of operates like its own city, even though it's on unincorporated county land.

The HOA, which is of course funded by monthly fees from the residents. $118 if you're on the main sewer. Pays for its own police force and road department. So who does, like who's on your road crew? Where do they work? This guy right here. Well, where do they live?

They're not living here in Fairfield Glade, right? No, most of these boys are from the county. But then again, there are opportunities for the brand new retirees, or even not even so brand new retirees, that can come to Fairfield Glade, work at one of the golf courses at the marina, and you get your free amenities. Do you work mostly with buyers or sellers? Buyers. I love the buyers. The buyers are the happy ones.

They're finally getting to be retired and be kids again. I always call them the new kids on the block because basically they are. No job, brand new place. Got this one closing next week. Nice house. So when people sell, do they stay in Fairfield or do they move out? Usually not. They've got to go for family. They've got to go because they've gotten older or family member has gotten older, something like that. Fairfield's never permanent for anybody. So my advice to you is get here as early as you can so that you can enjoy it and play all the golf you

can stand and all the hiking and all the fun stuff. The median income in Cumberland County is less than $60,000 a year but a lot of the new construction here in Fairfield Glade is aimed at much higher income residents. When this lake was finished we had a huge growth spurt in Fairfield and people were coming down here and building these mansions that were basically costing a quarter or so of the price that they were getting where they were from. That's one of the tensions at play as demographic changes shuffle where people live.

Retirees with buying power come here, increasing demand for certain services like construction and lawn care, which then changes things for the people who are already here. One of those people coming up after the break, but first let's do the numbers. Well here you go. Dow Industrial is up 289 points today, about two-thirds percent, 44,713. Nasdaq obviously went the other way, down 612 at the close. It was 720 or something early in the session, three and a tenth percent at the bell, 19,341. S&P 500 dragged down as well, percent and a half, 88 points, 6,012. Tech stocks of course plummeted after the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek saw the rapid

rise of a low-cost chatbot it launched last week. Prim said it developed the app for a fraction of the cost of rival U.S. technology, raising concerns as you know about American competitiveness in the field and also, and this is significant, about the large sums being invested by US companies like, oh, Microsoft off 210%. Micron Technology dropped 11.7%. Nvidia, chip design company, might have heard of, tumbled almost 17% today. Bond prices went up.

The yield on the 10-year T-note down 4.53%. This obviously, this whole AI thing, it's a story to watch, and we will. You're listening to Marketplace. Hi, this is Julie from Centennial, Colorado. I listen to Marketplace on my drive home from on my three to midnight ER shifts. Kai and the gang keep me awake and interested for my 30 minute drive. For someone not in the financial field, it's a fantastic synopsis of all things business and economics.

I love the commitment to showcasing a steady stream of brilliant and articulate women who are experts in their field. Join me in supporting Marketplace with a gift today. Go to marketplace.org slash donate. This is Marketplace. I'm Kyle Rizdal. We're starting a series today about what happens to an economy when working age people get outnumbered by people who are past their peak working years.

We're calling it the age of work. In Cumberland County, Tennessee, that demographic shift is already well underway. It's a place with one of the oldest workforces in the country. That's according to ADP. And it has two distinct populations. There's Fairfield Glade, a retirement community dotted with golf courses and man-made lakes. And there's the town of Crossville, which is more duplexes and mobile home parks, fewer bocce ball courts and lakefront mansions. And at 7 p.m. in the middle of November It smells like fall out here. It was pitch black outside Melissa Ellis's house. Hi kitty cat. Hi.

Oh, I don't know. I don't usually just walk into strangers homes. That's not a thing I do. Hi, I'm Kai. Hi, I'm Melissa. Nice to see you Melissa. How are you? I'm doing good. Doing good. Excuse the mess. Hi Melissa, I'm Mila. Hi Mila. Nice to meet you. Thanks for taking the time. We appreciate it. Sorry to crash in your home. No, you're fine. No, you're fine. We've been working all day. We've had a birthday party all weekend. Nice, very good. We're doing the best we can. Melissa's 47.

She's got four kids and she is a long time Crossville resident. Is that an electronic drum set? Yes, it is. My husband's a drummer. That's awesome. It's really great when we have to do like practices with me on keys and him there.

And we'll get to the practicing thing in a minute. First thing you want to do is tell us who you are and what do you do around here? Okay, so my name's Melissa Ellis, and I feel like I guess I'm the resident musician. I do jazz music. I feel like the music I do is kind of a favorite in the Fairfield Glade area,

which is the retirement community. My music isn't exciting to most of the locals because it's not skinnered, is how I usually say it. Free Bird! I know, and I do have people, I could be doing Etta James one minute, Ella Fitzgerald, and Never Fail, someone will say, hey, do you know Free Bird?

No, I don't! But yeah, I've been doing jazz and blues. I got my start at the Cumberland County Playhouse when I was 15 professionally, and I've done a little bit of touring, you know, with a regional theater. So you're a lifer here. I moved here when I was 12, and then I left, and then I came back, and then I left again,

and I've been back since 2013. Do you get by doing it? How do you get by around here? Okay, so before 2020, I was on the road a lot to stay relevant and to keep money flowing. Yeah, how do you get by around? Okay, so before 2020, I was on the road a lot to stay relevant and to keep money flowing. And 2020, you know, if you're a musician, you lost your job.

I learned how to do a lot of streaming and it kind of helped maidens meet. That same year, I also decided to go back to grad school. Now Melissa makes a living with a bunch of part-time jobs. She still performs occasionally. Her jazz music is especially popular with those higher income retirees over in Fairfield Glade.

They are my people. They are my people. They really are. But she also teaches. She works for a couple of nonprofits. And she's a session musician. People pay me to do background vocals or that kind of thing.

What's it like raising kids here? Ha ha ha! Um, my older two are already graduated. If they ever got into any trouble, I knew about it. This town is so small. I mean, I know everybody. And if I don't know everybody, I'm going to. You know?

But, um, it's a small town. That small town as we said is getting bigger. The county's population has grown 6% since April of 2020 and not all the locals are happy about that. They don't want to see it get big. They don't want to. Now there's some of us that do. It creates jobs. It makes our lives easier to take care of our kids. I mean, that's probably the hardest part raising kids here is there's really no income. I mean, we're tight. Say more.

Okay. So my husband and I are both, we both hold a master's degree, but he doesn't make a lot. What he does for a living, he works in packaging, international packaging, and whereas most people that do that in his field and in his position make over six figures, he makes a little over 50. Because he's here in Crossville? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with because he's here little over 50. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with because he's here in Crossville. They chose Crossville because it's an affordable overhead. He's the director of sales of the North American branch, and it sounds really impressive

until you realize that he gets paid once a month, and we have to just be very careful how we spend throughout the month. Now I have jobs that will fill out the holes throughout the rest of the month. But I remember for a while there, if we made it to the end of the month with just a little bit left in our account, we were like, woo, up top. Boy, we made it with 20 bucks in our account. We did it. But we pay our bills at the beginning of the month and then we have to watch what we do

for the rest of the month and then we have to watch what we do for the rest of the month. And lately we have grocery prices that are way high. Our cars break down. I had to buy a new car this last month. And it's like now some of our budget's going to this. And I have two kids in college and two kids still growing up. It's still growing up. It's tight. Stressful? Yes, it can be very stressful. But at the same time I look at, there are a lot of people around here that have it far worse than we do.

And we have a roof over our heads. Granted, there's some leaks that we've had to have fixed. I got to patch that. Melissa and her husband rent this house, leak in the ceiling and all. And given that the median home price in Cumberland County has increased something like 70% since 2020, that's according to Redfin, she doesn't really think they're going to be buying anytime soon. It's crazy. So and you know, and I think it's going to start balancing out, but it's

never going to be what it was. I have another question. So you spend some time with the Fairfield residents, entertaining and talking to them. Have you ever thought about what retirement would look like for you? Okay. So honestly, I have a legitimate fear that I will never get to retire and I will have to work until I'm dead. But my husband and I have always kind of dreamed that what we would like to do, he's always kind of wanted to have a coffee shop, a cafe. And we talked about, you know, expatriating someday and, you know, living in Europe and having a small cafe, maybe, you know, a little

jazz corner, you know, bring in jazz artists. That's how I imagine I'm going to be, but I don't think I'm going to get to do that. I don't know what it's going to look like at this point. I don't think there's going to be a retirement. The change that's happening in Cumberland County, the number of working-age people getting more and more outnumbered is going to create opportunities and challenges for policymakers and businesses and you in the decades to come because age and this economy are coming for us all. On the program tomorrow, a place where Fairfield and Crossville intersect. No final today, too much goodness from Tennessee. More of that coming tomorrow, by the way. Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Iruak Bonobi, Nicholas Guillaume, Maria Hohenhorst, Sarah

Leeson, Sean McHenry and Sophia Terenzio. I'm Kai Rizdal, we will see you tomorrow everybody. This is APM.