Is the United States ready for an older workforce?

Monday we kicked off our series “The Age of Work,” which is about how demographic shifts are shaking up the U.S. and global economies. We’re starting this series in Cumberland County, Tennessee.

ADP Research funded this reporting, and according to its data, Cumberland County has one of the oldest workforces in the country. ADP is a global payroll and human resources tech company that processes payroll for more than 40 million workers globally. 

Cumberland County has a high concentration of retirees — about one-third of the population is 65 and older. That compares to less than 18% in the U.S. as a whole.

The county seat here is Crossville, population around 12,500. About 10 miles away is Fairfield Glade, a retirement destination with 9,500 residents.

In this fourth episode of “The Age of Work” from Cumberland County, we visit the Palace Theatre in Crossville, and “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal and ADP chief economist Nela Richardson discuss what they learned about the economy in Cumberland County. 

Click the audio player above to hear the full story. 

Retirees are the Palace Theater’s core audience

Ryssdal and Richardson visited the Palace Theatre, which is owned by the city of Crossville. It’s home to one theater, which seats about 300 people, and where audiences from Crossville and Fairfield Glade watch old movies, concerts and more. Malena Fisher has been the administrator for almost three years. 

“We have school trips all the time,” Fisher said. “For field trips, $5 gets them their drink, candy, popcorn and the movie. If you’re an adult, then you have to pay us $10 for all of that. We try to keep things low — it’s more of a community service.” 

The Palace originally opened in 1938. It closed in 1978 and sat empty for decades. The city bought the property with plans to tear it down, according to Fisher, but a group of locals raised money to save the theater, leading to the current city-run business. 

“Because we are a retirement community, our base is mostly retirees,” Fisher said. “We’re changing our programming, so we’re starting to get some young people in.”

From Cumberland County to the rest of the world

This week, Kai Ryssdal and Nela Richardson spoke about their trip to Tennessee back in November and what it taught them about the future of this economy. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: You’ve been listening the past couple days as we’ve aired those stories. We just heard Malena at the Palace. Big picture: What were your impressions from three days in Cumberland County, Tennessee?

Nela Richardson: Big picture: I saw two very different views of retirement. I saw one that felt like summer camp. There was pickleball, there was line dancing, there was friends. It felt almost magical, in a beautiful setting. On the other side of that, I saw a retirement that looks like what what we’re all scared about — there’s just not enough. I saw people who were happy to work, but had to work. I saw how the opioid addiction has affected not only younger people, but the grandparents that are left behind to raise a younger generation. I saw the trade-offs in healthcare, and more importantly, I’m left with the question, where do young people fit in in this battle of the retirement lives, right?

Ryssdal: I don’t know if you remember one of those nights when we were out to dinner, and in the restaurant, there were about four or five sets of grandparents taking care of grandchildren. Remember that?

Richardson: I remember that. And you know, I’ve heard that the best part of being a grandparent is being able to take your [grand]child home after you’ve babysat them, so they’re missing out on the best part. They’re raising these children, and some of them are doing that on a fixed income.

Ryssdal: Let’s talk about the ripple effects for a second that Malena was talking about there. What’s happening in Cumberland County with the changing demographics and the aging workforce, those ripple effects are coming through the rest of this economy.

Richardson: Yes, I mean, that’s how we started back by the pickleball courts. It’s so great that Malena used the term ripple effect, because really, that’s just a way to say what economists say, in a very dignified way, as the multiplier in macroeconomics. I mean, how your decisions on Main Street at the microlevel affect the rest of the economy and vice versa. Now, we visited a community that from the hospital to the the foundations that were present, the nonprofits, even the retirement community themselves have been reoriented to helping the local economy. But you can imagine a community that makes a very different choice, and that will have a ripple effect. And so what they teach us in macro in grad school is that there’s only one way an economy grows — when there are more people, more workers, and those workers become more productive. In this community, you’re facing a place where there’s not more workers. Now, we can talk about the productivity factor, but that first step of more workers is being challenged — and not just in the U.S., but in almost every wealthy country on the planet.

Ryssdal: We have talked on this program in previous conversations, but also in this series, about the data that ADP has, right, tens of millions of records of how people are getting paid, and you know, where they are and all that jazz. Do you suppose that markets like Sheboygan and Ottumwa and Austin, Texas, and Atlanta and big cities like New York, are they ready for this change that that is coming in the American workforce? We are all getting older.

Richardson: No, they’re not ready. What I really like about this visit with you, Kai, is that we specialize at ADP Research on data, but we always knew that there were there was a human behind that data point. And we got to meet some really cool humans. But nobody’s talking about this aging workforce in the way that was captured during this series. And I don’t think big cities or small cities are investing in the things that will keep young people growing. I loved when we went to the grocery store and and he was like, you know, people are not paying attention to their greatest strength in the community. I also loved what he said about there being jobs there. So it’s really about like, how do you serve an aging retirement community with young people and direct those young people to the places of opportunity? I would love to hear more cities talking about that.

Ryssdal: Let’s just, by way of wrap-up, talk about what’s happening next in this series. This is a global phenomenon, as we talked about that day standing next to the pickleball court. There are countries where a young workforce is a distinct advantage for them and will be over the next 50 years.

Richardson: Yes, that’s right. When you look at the demographic projections — and remember, there’s only one way this global economy is going to grow — when there are more workers, and those workers get more productive, those more workers in terms of prime age, younger workers, they’re hitting places like Africa in terms of growth rate, or Southeast Asia. The question in my mind is, are the jobs there and the skill sets there to support the needs of not just African countries and South East Asian countries, but the global economy? I think of people now as the new globalization in economics. We talk about trade in terms of goods and services. We never talk about how interconnected we are as people, and increasingly so, if the technology and the wealth is in one place and the growing worker base is another, how do we connect those dots on a global scale?