Small town museum, big time impact

*Appeared in the Laurel Leader-Call newspaper

Last Friday night, I enjoyed what my sister-in-law dubbed the most “quintessential summertime Southern event” on the lawn of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art: 2021’s Blues Bash.  Filled with bluesy tunes, messy barbeque, and the picturesque backdrop of LRMA’s front porch at twilight, my Friday night could not have been more pleasant. 

It made me grateful to be from a town like Laurel, where the convergence of small-town charm and big city amenities is on full display.  You won’t be surprised to know, however, that it also got me to thinking about the cultural and economic impacts of venues like our own Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.  

 

If you’ve read my columns before, you probably recognize I’m a bit of a policy wonk who loves any sort of economic analysis.  Turns out, the American Alliance of Museums conducted one a few years ago regarding the so-called “museum effect.”  Let’s dive in, shall we?

 

One observation from the report is that museums “play an essential role in cultural and social life across the US.  They tell our stories, preserve our heritage, interpret the past, and explore the future.” 

 

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  The Museum is home to many of my favorite childhood memories.  As a kid, I stared with wonder at the miniature Choctaw woven basket that was so tiny it had to be viewed through a microscope (or that’s what I recall).  When I was a senior in high school, I visited the Museum and fell in love with William Dunlap’s works (one of his mixed media collections was on display at the time).  

 

Today I am the proud owner of Mr. Dunlap’s “Green Hills of Africa” (an artist proof pigment print with hand coloring), which resides over my fireplace…all because of an art exhibit I saw when I was eighteen years old.

 

In my professional life, I’ve used the Museum as a venue for work (for example, I coordinated an event at LRMA when former Gov. Haley Barbour released his memoirs on Katrina, “America’s Great Storm”).  From childhood to my professional career, the Museum has certainly made an impact on me. 

 

But the beauty lies in this:  My experience isn’t isolated.  So many individuals in Laurel have been introduced to artists, culture, and other educational activities through the work of the Museum.  It’s a jewel not only for the City Beautiful, but for the entire state of Mississippi.

 

Beyond the cultural impact of museums, they also positively impact bottom lines.  From the report: “…the museum sector is also essential to the national economy – generating GDP, stimulating jobs, and contributing taxes.”  Oxford Economics, which conducted the analysis on behalf of the American Alliance for Museums, found that more than 850 million visits are made to U.S. museums annually, resulting in a total economic contribution of more than $50 billion in GDP (gross domestic product), 726,200 jobs, and $12 billion in taxes to local, state, and federal governments. 

 

My own personal observation is that the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art outpunches its weight in comparison to other museums across the state.  (What can I say? I’m admittedly a bit biased.) That’s why I suggest you visit the Museum “early and often,” as they say, and consider signing up for museum membership.  It’s simple – go to www.lrma.org and click on “support.”

 

There are so many reasons to love Laurel – the live oak trees, the history, the people… but few city attributes are quite as meaningful to the culture of place as the Museum.

This Memorial Day, let's examine voter participation rates

*Appeared in the Laurel Leader-Call newspaper.

A few months back, a friend of mine suggested I look into voter participation rates. As we approach Memorial Day weekend, I thought now was the appropriate time to dive into voting patterns to see just how much we, as a society, take for granted the right to vote. 

 

I’ll give you a hint: We take it for granted – by a wide margin. 

 

In 2020, 66.7 percent of the eligible voting population in the United States voted during the presidential election.  That means of the people eligible to vote, just two-thirds actually exercised their right to choose the nation’s chief executive.  The highest voter turnout by state was 80 percent in Minnesota.  Compare that to Mississippi’s turnout of 60.2 percent and you’ll start getting an idea about how much voters care – or, perhaps, do not care – about elections. 

 

These numbers are estimates based on information from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office as well as the United States Election Project. To determine the voting eligible population (VEP) in a state, the Census Bureau first identifies the voting-age population (VAP), which is essentially all residents 18 years and older, and then subtracts ineligible persons from that number, such as non-citizens or felons (depending on state laws). 

 

During the last presidential election, an estimated 1.325 million voters out of a possible 2.2 million voters went to the polls (hence the 60.2 percent turnout rate).  Said differently, more than 876,000 Mississippians who were eligible to vote in 2020 chose not to exercise that right. 

 

That’s inexcusable, but it isn’t just a Mississippi problem.  The M.I.T Election Data and Science Lab suggests that states with higher turnout rates in presidential elections tend to be in the north while states with lower turnout rates tend to be in the south. 

 

Factors influencing voter behavior include electoral competitiveness (that is, just how close is the political race?); the type of election (whether it’s a general or primary election, for example); and demographics such as age, race, gender, and income levels. 

 

So, yes, I understand there are reasons more complicated than “just not caring” about the electoral process that individuals have for not voting.  (My millennial experience tells me that folks my age and younger feel their votes don’t matter, but of course one need not look much further than the recent election of District 2 Justice Court Judge Sonny Saul…he won by one vote!)

 

As we celebrate this Memorial Day, I hope each of us will give more than a passing thought to our responsibility to those fallen soldiers who died to protect our rights, including the right to vote. Laurel residents and other city-dwellers can start by participating in municipal elections, which are right around the corner (June 8^th).  

 

In state where labor force participation is low, Reeves & Gunn are right on unemployment

*Appeared in the Laurel Leader Call newspaper  

Gov. Reeves recently announced he would be ending the state’s participation in extra federal unemployment benefits, saying that Mississippi no longer has a need to opt into programs like the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance which Congress passed last year to alleviate the impact of job losses due to COVID-19.  

 

In a letter, Speaker Philip Gunn had urged the Governor to end the program, stating that “small businesspeople…inform us their businesses are at risk.  They report that they cannot get employees to return to work because they can earn more from combined federal and state unemployment benefits than their normal wages.”

 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which measures wages, the mean hourly wage in Mississippi as of May 2020 was $20.00.  This means an individual working 40 hours per week will earn, on average, about $800.  Compare that to what an individual can currently earn by claiming unemployment – a maximum of $235.00 per week plus another $300.00 in the extra federal pandemic stipend for a total of $535.00 per week.  While this amount is roughly 33 percent less than what an individual can earn from working, it does represent a significant increase over “normal” unemployment benefits – an increase of more than 128 percent.

 

That means unemployment benefits, when including the federal supplement, have more than doubled for recipients.  Economics teaches us that this type of increase has an impact on human behavior.

 

It reminds me of what my old economics professor at Vanderbilt used to say…a lot. He’d always talk about “incentive alignment,” and while his examples were not usually unemployment-related, the same concept remains true here.  If individuals can earn nearly as much by filing unemployment as they can by working a job, then some (not all) will be incentivized to choose the former approach.

 

That’s particularly troubling in a state like Mississippi, where the labor force participation rate has lagged behind the nation for decades.  As of March 2021, the state’s labor force participation rate (meaning the number of people in the workforce, including those with jobs and those actively looking for jobs) was 56.1 percent, according to the BLS.  The U.S. rate stood at 61.5 percent for the same time period. 

 

When I was worked for former Gov. Haley Barbour, I led a project on the state’s labor force participation rate.  We commissioned a study from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research to delve into why Mississippi’s workforce lagged behind our neighbors and the nation.  While the study is now about a decade old, many observations remain poignant today. 

 

“Labor force participation is a key social indicator because the economic performance of a state and the well-being of its residents are closely tied to labor force outcomes. Together, the labor force participation rate (LFPR) and the unemployment rate are of paramount concern to state governments because living standards and consumption are so closely tied to work and earnings from employment,” the paper began. 

 

It studied many reasons why individuals dropped out of the workforce and ultimately concluded that contributing factors were Mississippians living in non-metropolitan areas, Mississippi having a higher percentage of residents who had not completed high school and having a lower percentage of residents who had a college degree, and – you guessed it – the incidence of government income transfers, such as Social Security benefits and unemployment benefits. 

 

I am not an opponent of the state’s unemployment insurance program.  I believe it can and does serve an important societal purpose as a temporary stop-gap for those individuals who lost jobs through no fault of their own and are actively seeking other employment.  However, this program was never designed to be a permanent income solution and, with misaligned incentives, can do more harm than good to the state’s economy.

 

Like our state itself, Mississippi’s labor force market is complicated.  There are many reasons for low workforce participation, and it would be overly simplistic to say people aren’t searching for jobs just because they’re getting bloated benefit checks.  But policymakers must not ignore proven economic theories about the impact of government income transfers on labor force participation.

 

And…that’s a long, wonky way of me saying that I ultimately agree with both Gov. Reeves and Speaker Gunn in their opposition to extra federal benefit checks for the unemployed. 

 

Tourism as an economic driver

*Appeared in the Laurel Leader Call newspaper 

Let’s talk about tourism as an economic driver.  The Mississippi Development Authority, the state agency tasked with promoting Mississippi, recently released a set of data points related to the impact tourism has on the state’s economy – from tax revenues to private sector job creation.  It’s a fascinating picture of just how important this oft-underrated industry is to the Hospitality State.

Before I get into the details of the report, I want to come clean.  I used to roll my eyes at the thought of tourism being an economic boost for the state.  Sure, visitors are important, and maybe they have more discretionary income to spend than Mississippians, but just how many people visit our state?  

 

Turns out, it’s a lot.  These days, my eyes no longer roll; instead, they’re open wide at the numbers of visitors Mississippi receives from all around the country and even the world. 

 

According to the comprehensive MDA report, in Fiscal Year 2020 the state had an estimated 21 million total visitors (including overnight, day leisure, business, domestic, and international).  To be clear, that means that we had 21 million visitors – even during part of the pandemic!  Forty-four percent of visitors are out-of-state, coming from places like Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and Arkansas.  The top international countries of origin were Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, and Germany.   

 

Tourism and travel accounted for 80,740 direct jobs in Mississippi, with 98 percent of these jobs in the private sector.  The industry also comprised 7.1 percent of total establishment-based nonfarm employment – or one of every 14 jobs.  This puts travel and tourism as fourth in the state in terms of employment, behind private manufacturing, educational and health services, and retail trade.

 

Fourth in job creation!  That’s significant, y’all. Total jobs in this industry are 106,740, once you include the additional 26,000 indirect and/or induced jobs.

 

In terms of revenue, travel and tourism provided 6.5 percent of the state’s $5.6 billion general fund, or roughly $362 million in money spent via visitor expenditures, tourism capital investment, and travel and tourism personal income, sales taxes, and other taxes.  

 

What does this mean?  Think about it this way.  If travel and tourism were taken away yet all other sectors of Mississippi’s economy stayed constant, the state would see its unemployment rate skyrocket from an annual rate of 7.9 percent to 14.3 percent, and individuals would see their annual taxes increase by $525 to make up for the lost revenue.  

 

Not too shabby. 

 

For its part, Laurel was listed in the report as being a tourism place of interest.  That’s no surprise, given the huge success of the HGTV show, “Hometown,” which has attracted visitors from across the globe.  I would be remiss not to mention other factors contributing to Laurel’s tourism success, such as the presence of a regional airport (Hattiesburg-Laurel had 7,933 passenger boardings scheduled for Calendar Year 2020) and the Amtrak station, which is one of 11 stations across the state.  Total ridership in Mississippi was 56,586 in FY 2020, with revenues reaching about $4.55 million. (Side note: I’ve always thought it would be fun to take the train from Laurel to New Orleans.) 

 

Tourism is a critical part of the state’s economy, but we’ve also seen just how dramatically it can change the face of a small town like Laurel.  Anecdotally, I’ve experienced the growing pains associated with tourism boosts – such as being unable to find parking in downtown or having to wait in line for a table at a local restaurant.  But these are growing pains I heartily welcome, because the more people who visit our state and city, the more likely we are to continue seeing economic growth and prosperity.

 

And what’s that they say about a rising tide lifts all boats?  I certainly believe that.  So, tourists, welcome to the Hospitality State.  Come visit us, spend some money, and – most importantly – tell your friends about your wonderful experience in Mississippi!