We’ve been talking about the Talent Dividend so often here that we feared that it would just become the latest buzzword with no lasting commitment to it.
Boy, were we wrong. Leadership Memphis’s President David Williams and his board embraced it as a priority and have set out to turn it into a movement. In a short time, they have amassed important allies and supporters and set talent as a lens through which we should consider our city and strategies to improve it.
As you know by now, the Talent Dividend is $1 billion and results from increasing the percentage of college-educated people by only 1%. That’s 8,002 graduates, which stands as the target for all that Leadership Memphis is doing. (MPACT Memphis is supporting this same goal with its focus and work as well.)
To further their work, the Talent Dividend team has set up a website, which will be enhanced in the coming months. We hope you will visit it at www.memphistalentdividend.com.
Here’s what the site’s home page says:
At Leadership Memphis, we’re on a mission.
Together with more than 100 other organizations known as the Memphis Talent Dividend (MTD) we’ve set a goal to increase the number of college graduates in the Memphis metro area by one percentage point over the next five years.
Why? Education is an economic driver that will generate jobs, attract new business to Memphis, allow local businesses to expand and nurture entrepreneurship. Education is also the antidote to chronic drains on our community, such as poverty, crime and illiteracy.
If the Memphis region can increase our college attainment by one percentage point, we will realize a $1 billion annual talent dividend. Our goal is to produce 8,002 college graduates.
What’s our plan for achieving this? The MTD has some great things in the works, and you can be a big part of the solution, too.
Ask yourself the question, “What can I do to help someone get into college, be successful in college or go back to college if they dropped out?” Explore our website, find out how to Get Involved, contribute to the 100 Things in 100 Days campaign, Donate, or Become a Collaborative. Be the change you want to see.
“Education is also the antidote to chronic drains on our community, such as poverty, crime and illiteracy.”
Good point here as long as you have graduates, as Gwyn earlier pointed out, returning to their communities for employment.
Combined with education we must create businesses in the inner city neighborhoods in or near them or we will continue to sustain “poverty incubators” where the educated ones that make it out of those areas will rightfully go to other cities or other parts of Memphis to live and find employment.
Nonprofits like Advance Memphis are tackling this issue head on by earnestly struggling to figure out just how to incubate businesses in low-income areas despite there been zero short-term incentives for most businesses to relocate there. Cleveland is trying to address this issue by CREATING businesses in low-income areas surrounding their medical district, realizing that the quality of life and economic vibrancy of adjacent neighborhoods affects their bottom line. Not easy work but critical.
Actually, there are incentives for businesses to locate in designated high poverty districts through the Empowerment Zone program.
Thanks for the info Urbanut.
With two children in college I hope there are jobs for them in Memphis when they finish. One got his MA last year and says there is nothing for him in Memphis. In fact, I have had to leave with my two graduate degrees while my wife and kids are still there. Nother for me there either. I love Memphis and hope to once again live there some day.
Hi Tom. George
Anonymous, I hear what you’re saying. I love the idea of increasing college grads here in Memphis, but what good does it do when there aren’t jobs for them here? I graduated from the UofM in ‘08 with a degree in finance and economics, and am finding it hard to find a better job here in Memphis. I’m currently underemployed. I’ve had to expand my search to places like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and even Nashville. Some classmates and I had a conversation with one of our Econ professors a year ago about our job struggles here, and he told us that if we took two things away from his class it’s this: 1) find a car that works and 2) drive to Atlanta. We asked why that was, and told us that the Memphis business community is hard on new graduates and that they don’t seem to hire locally. I hope things change b/c I’d hate to leave Memphis. It’s where my friends and family live. But things today are different and jobs are just as important IMO, as city amenities. I hope this initiative works b/c I want to see Memphis succeed.
I understand what you are saying but I would want to drill down further into the TD equation. Does it not matter what the college graduates major was? Do we not need to emphasis marketable training? In other words, more engineers, computer analysts, etc rather than a lot of liberal arts graduates? Before you criticize, I have to admit that I am a liberal arts grad.
Also, does it not also add to the TD to have a larger population with more advanced technical training in various fields. I would think there is as great a need for these indiivduals as college graduates.
What empowerment zone program?
I hope we can achieve the talent dividend (8,002 college grads, 5 year increase) and I look forward to ideas of Leadership Memphis, MPACT and the “100 organizations”.
These efforts alone may attract the college grads who will flock to Memphis or stay in Memphis and wait for the jobs to come like manna from heaven. Maybe like “land banks” of property for development in the future, we can create “grad banks” of college trained persons to be employed in the future. Or maybe we send them off to far away lands to be summoned for a return like George. “Someday I will call upon you for your special talents” (Godfather I).
However, but, none-the-less, someone needs to figure out the chicken/egg thing a la Mtown85. The equation – supply (college grads living in Memphis metropolitan area) = demand (jobs for college grads); or Is it supply (jobs) = demand (grads)? Which comes first? Damn Reaganomics.
It has been observed that people will work for lower salaries and wages in Denver because of the amenities in the area. Others are attracted to big time research University complexes. Look at the 10 emerging megaregions that will absorb much of the nation’s growth by 2050. Each has a set of attributes attractive to college grads and thus companies who employ them.
Where does that leave Memphis, which can’t even get its little region together to say “us” to the global “them”? Damn $1.00 cotton, the cotton gin, and the steam engine or “us” wouldn’t be so divided.
The 70 business leaders who support merging Memphis and Shelby County may be self-centered, greedy, holier than thou, vested interests, but at least they understand how to create jobs.
Hasava- are you being sarcastic or do you not know what the empowerment zone program was about?
Slightly sarcastic relative to words “empowerment” and “zone”. Memphis and Shelby have given tax incentives to businesses largely in suburbs or downtown, but not to poor neighborhoods north and south of downtown.
The Empowerment Zone (EZ) program came out of the Clinton administration in 1994. Memphis applied to have a group of inner city census tracks designated as an EZ but was not selected. Memphis tried again in late 1990s but again was unsuccessful. However, under the Bush administration Memphis received honorable mention in the form of a “Renewal Community” (RC) designation in 2002.
Both EZ and RC designations gave tax credits, accelerated depreciation, 0% capital gains taxes, and low interest loans (tax free bonds) to businesses that located, hired and made capital improvements in the EZ or RC. The EZ gave bigger tax credits and other benefits to businesses.
I do not know to what extent Memphis provided required local incentives in the 68 Census Tracts that comprise the RC. Many of the federal incentives provided by the RC expired at the end of 2009, unless HUD did something (?) to extend them. Also I can’t find a progress report on business development in Memphis’ RC; but since the RC included the airport, FedEx was probably the biggest beneficiary for something it would have done anyway.
Oh, I understand that the proposed Pyramid and Pinch revitalization projects will benefit by being in the RC relative to the New Markets Tax Credits, but I don’t know how this will work.
But it sounds so catchy, doesn’t it? Voting against legislation that supports something called an “Empowerment Zone” would be akin to voting against puppies, apple pie and clean air.
Thanks for the clarification- learn something new every day. I totally forgot about the transition between the two (and the odd overlap that occurred as well). I too am unaware of any documentation or study done to determine the level of impact, if any, these programs yielded.
I think a question that might be asked concerning financial support for inner city business efforts concerns the level of awareness and understanding of you average inner city entrepreneur when it comes to such federal, state and local programs. How many who sought or continue to pursue the creation of their own business were even aware such a program existed or were informed enough to realize how they might (or might not) benefit from its existence? There are a lot of programs out there designed to assist small business owners in various ways, but it seems as though there might be an un-bridged chasm between legislation and application. Then again, I am not a small business owner in the inner city, so I might be totally off base.
“Nonprofits like Advance Memphis are tackling this issue head on by earnestly struggling to figure out just how to incubate businesses in low-income areas despite there been zero short-term incentives for most businesses to relocate there. ”
Why reinvent the wheel, the dynamics of making this happen in third world nations is “a known” not an unknown. I’ve posted about it before.
We don’t have to “figure out” anything more than where, when, if, to what ends, etc. Little things like that work themselves out. What we’re trying to reinvent is how to fleece the feds for big money for small projects with no results.
If all the previous “incentives” worked, we wouldn’t be looking at a hollow inner city.
Guess who’s not playing around about destroying YOUR future prospects.
http://repoweramerica.org/ads/china-clean-energy.php?source=ads-facebook&subsource=OM_C3_fb_china_cleanenergy_fans&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=cpc
Depressing news, I’ve stated it before and there was no time to catch up to the Chinese, who our government/lobbyist/consortium have been feeding ideas about greed and capitalism, now they are stuffing it where the sun don’t shine. The Chinese are nimble, expedient, motivated, and can work in any part of a city or countryside, they have access to cheaply made materials and manufacturing, they know where we are going and they plan to beat us to every punch. They will flood and dominate every market, and every conversation we have will be like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
We HAVE TO make a deal with China to have a plan employing Americans for these products here unless the US government is preparing to go to war with China. Their economic warfare has already won, now they are backing up to finish us off. This is kinda like pre Pearl Harbor.
As my significant other says, “I just feel sorry for the pooch!”
Empowerment Zone?
That means depressed area not getting enough police coverage and/or badly designed area unfriendly to commerce, or declining area where businesses are vacating in my experience.
How do you take advantage of one?
Get a lawyer, no one can understand the workings of it.