OT: I think MDA does some pretty solid stuff. It's hard to believe we rank 50th?
- Thread starter horshack.sixpack
- Start date
I imagine it's in the methodology - over 50% of the scoring is Workforce, Infrastructure, Economy, and Education. Gotta think we're very low in those. Cost of living and cost of doing business - where I'd guess Mississippi shines - is only 16%.
Exactly.
Education might be the best one of those. Mississippi was 39th in KIDS COUNT in 2022 (the date that article Horshack cited was published — in 2024 it’s up to 30 and even then it’s only worth 7 percent total so it’s not going to move the needle much at all).
Edit to add: I’d also think Mississippi would rank really low in life and health.
From a doing business perspective, it's nice that more elementary kids are reading and doing math well, but what they're really going to care about is % college degrees, % grad degrees, and workforce training.
Exactly. But at least MDA can make a solid argument that we’re getting the kids ready for higher ed and workforce training.
Yep, have to start somewhere. It's far more of a workable plan than getting college grads and folks trained up in the trades to move from some other state to Miss.
On a side note I knew a wealthy Delta farmer who was well connected politically who told me back in the day farmers used to discourage new businesses so as to not hafta compete for workers & wages. Made me sick thinking about that but I would assume that's not an issue anymore.
This study is pre-Amazon data facility. Next year we might just make it up to 49.
Access to capital, workforce, health, and tech & innovation kill us, thanks to our two poor education systems, specifically in our rural areas.
Our workforce is what really kills us. It's hard to find people that can even pass a drug test.
I heard this same thing in Meridian for years, that the local business owners would fight businesses moving to Meridian because it would raise the wage base.
That has happened in a lot of places in Mississippi, not just the Delta.
I see MDA attracting a surprising number of large businesses to invest in our state. Perhaps that's an indicator of how much more business these other states get, if what i see looks like "a lot"?
Now if you can convince kids that trades are good options over the everyone should go to college mentality, we might have something.
Same in Greenwood, Grenada and Winona, except it's more that retailers don't want to compete against other retailers.
Grenada and Winona both on 55 (with 82 crossing at Y-known-er), the talk has always been that local business leaders kept out potential new businesses like Lowes, etc.
I don’t find it hard to believe. Think about how challenging it would be to hire personnel for a software startup in Laurel.
Meh. Fun with averages. On average, our infrastructure is crap. But in the few places where it's great, there's plenty of cheap spots to set up, with workers, etc. Not so in other states. I doubt their methodology takes that into account.
Specifically, I use to hear that local business owners fought to keep Roadway Express out because of their high wages. Roadway long gone now.
But are the large businesses investing that much in Mississippi compared to elsewhere?
And how much of that money is geared towards employee salaries?
Baby steps first.
Convince them to go to school.
Then convince them to go to jucos or four-year colleges and universities because not many of them do even with dual enrollment.
One day people will realize the WorkForce Participation Rate is a real factor.
It's going to be industry specific, but i would suspect our infrastructure score would be pretty close to average. If you care about 4 lane highways, we actually have pretty good coverage in most of the areas that would be competitive for locations. Our rail is also pretty decent if you need rail. https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps/class-i-freight-carriers If you need river transportation, we are actually not good outside of the Mississippi and Tenn-Tom. Our blue water ports are shallow. Not really sure about our airports or how many industries that's really important to. If you're looking at utilities, I would assume we're better than average? If you are looking at pipelines for anything other than natural gas, I would assume we are below average.
Workforce is probably the big one we get hammered on. I'm not sure how much of a factor education really plays outside of workforce development. If you are bringing jobs that can be trained for with community college job training, we're probably pretty decent, except that we still probably just can't generate the number of workers needed across much of the state.
Not really true man. Pound for pound, we’re pretty good. It’s definitely aging and hard to maintain though, since we have so much capacity.
In the populated areas, sure. But in the rural areas we are behind other states' rural areas. And we are more rural.
Disagree again. We’ve got a lot of four lane for a state that size. Of course any town who doesn’t will bltch, but you have to look at it from 30K feet. Airports are in good shape. I don’t much about rail. But we have a few ports. That’s doing pretty well.
Hmm, maybe I'll dig for stats later. Doubt it, but maybe.
Let's put it this way. Pick a MS town away from the main interstates. Look at its infrastructure as a business would. Now do the same in, say, Ohio.
Not yet... evidently it's gonna take at least 8 years.
Port of Gulfport, Corps of Engineers sign dredging study agreement
The dredging would go the length of the channel from the port to Ship Island, which is about 18 miles.
www.wlox.com
Alabama, Mississippi deepwater ports bolstering channels, intermodal links
Ports of Alabama and Mississippi are pursuing enhanced intermodal connections and deeper channels to ease efficient movement of fast-growing cargo volumes.
General Projects & Upgrades | Port of Gulfport, Mississippi
See our restoration, current and future projects plus private investments.
shipmspa.com
I think they did some as part of the Katrina recovery but I think they are still too shallow to take a lot of vessels that move cargo in the gulf.
Link to original study.
| OVERALL RANK | STATE | WORKFORCE | INFRA-STRUCTURE | COST OF DOING BUSINESS | ECONOMY | LIFE, HEALTH & INCLUSION | TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION | BUSINESS FRIENDLINESS | EDUCATION | ACCESS TO CAPITAL | COST OF LIVING |
50 | Mississippi | 47 | 46 | 17 | 49 | 33 | 48 | 50 | 46 | 41 | 1 |
Two issues that make it hard to move up on the list:
1) Graduates still moving out of state to find career opportunities.
2) To most of the rest of the country, Mississippi is still "that land mass between LA and AL". No respect. We can probably thank many of the generations of Mississippi politicians before the '70s for that.
1) Graduates still moving out of state to find career opportunities.
2) To most of the rest of the country, Mississippi is still "that land mass between LA and AL". No respect. We can probably thank many of the generations of Mississippi politicians before the '70s for that.
Winona doesn’t have a Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart wanted to rebuild with a grocery store.
They said no because it would compete with the local grocery store that is complete **** from what my fam says
I’ve known Winona was a bunch of pussies since I stopped in their McDonalds and saw they had a set of GameCubes instead of a diphtheria infested ball pit
It was a sad day when the WalMarks in Y-known-er closed.
A WM Supercenter near the intersection of 82/55 would serve a lot of people.
No hardware store with convent hours is what pisses my off the most. Grenada has a decent hardware store, but it's not open late or on Sunday. TSC and HF have a few items, but it sucks when you have to drive an hour plus one way to the Lowes in Batesville for hardware.
Another reason we need to consolidate economic development around GTR and Jackson, where people actually are and actually have a chance to stay.
Spot 17in On. I Love Greek Philosophy & History but I ain't gonna spend $250K and 5-6 yrs on it especially since I have a recliner, vodka, The History Channel & internet readily available.
Those Ole Miss remodelers on HGTV have made Laurel look hip and cool. That's a start. But if the locals don't want to change then good luck.
I am interested to know what these towns are doing to prevent these companies from coming in. Is it just a rezoning block or what? Every town/county should have large scale development plans and codes that businesses must adhere to but that should be the main hurdle to overcome.
The planning commission and/or their board of alderman can squash anything if they want to.
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