Economic Development: Move to Kingsport area if you want low pay and lack of good paying jobs
The May, 2009 unemployment rate for the City of Kingsport was 12.6 percent. Retail sales growth is not keeping up with the inflation rate and Kingsport has a declining population. The Kingsport area, in a recent report by Kiplinger, has the highest cost of living, the lowest household income, and the worst job growth in Tennessee. See the link Kingsport Facts
Kingsport, as I have said many times needs to get industry to locate here that offer good paying jobs. More retail jobs aren’t needed. Get the good paying jobs first and then retail jobs will open up.
After giving it much thought, I have come to the collusion that the City of Kingsport, Chamber of Commerce, Networks, and Sullivan County are not capable of getting the type of jobs that the area needs. I’m sorry that I have to be blunt, but it is the truth and in my view these organizations are nothing more than a social/political club that cater to special interest groups. Look at the facts! Sure, there have been some gains, but these have been mostly in the retail/food areas.
We need the involvement of the State of Tennessee to help get jobs here. The State was able to help Chattanooga, Cleveland, and Clarksville get new manufacturing firms to locate in those cities and North Carolina was able to woo Google and Apple Computer to locate to North Carolina. North Carolina has changed some of its laws to make it easier for firms to locate to North Carolina. Because of the changes made at the state level in North Carolina, they will get an Apple Computer $1billion datacenter that will be built not far from the Google datacenter in Lenoir, NC. North Carolina also gave incentives to get these firms to locate to North Carolina.
Kingsport has relied too long on Eastman and it is time to get other firms here. Get rid of the mindset that economic growth is retail and get new people in those organizations that can go after manufacturing and technology firms. The economic development direction that the Kingsport area has been using is quite simple not working. See the link, Best and Worst Cities in Tennessee
The Higher Education Center is good, but I get the impression that the city thinks that firms will come to the city in droves because we have a bunch of smart cookies here. Upper Mississippi, I am sure did not wait to build a higher education center to attract car makers or did Lenoir, NC wait to have the type of employees that Google wanted trained before going after the Google business.
The time to act is now! The population of Kingsport has declined. Having more educated people trained at the Higher Education Center and the lack of jobs that would be attractive to them will insure that the declining population will get worse as they look elsewhere for employment.
Ask your state, county,and city elected officials what have they done to help spur economic growth for the area. Ask them for specific results and then you can decide if they are helping the area with good paying job growth.