Greenville lags significantly behind the U.S. average and other Southeastern cities
The good news is Greenville’s per capita income is growing.
The bad news is that it’s not growing fast enough.
In fact, Greenville County’s per capita personal income has fallen to 89.5 percent of the U.S. per capita personal income, a level not seen since the mid-1980s – before BMW located next door in Spartanburg County and brought a slew of automotive-related enterprises with it, and before companies such as Hubbell Lighting, TD Bank and Proterra called the Upstate home.
Why? Because while the county and the Upstate have attracted new companies, Greenville has struggled to educate its populace, said David Taylor, president of the University Center of Greenville, a consortium of seven colleges and universities.
“You can say the per capita income will go up if you bring in better jobs because the better jobs pay more,” Taylor said. “But you’re not going to get the better-paying jobs if you don’t have an educated workforce. The BMWs, the Michelins, the Hubble Lighting, the TD Banks can’t cover up when the majority of your people don’t have the education they need.”
The Greenville Metropolitan Statistical Area’s per capita personal income of $35,696 lags significantly behind the U.S. average of $43,735 and trails several comparable Southeastern cities.
A measure of competitiveness
Per capita personal income is the primary measure of an area’s economic competitiveness, experts say.
“It’s like a person’s vitals at the ER,” said Hank Hyatt, vice president for economic development at the Greenville Chamber of Commerce. “If a person’s blood pressure is up, it doesn’t tell you what is wrong, but it does show you might have a problem.”
Per capita income is used as a gauge because it offers a broader definition of personal income – it includes government transfers such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as well as interest and dividends – than the self-reported U.S. Census does.
“Per capita income measures the velocity of the economy rather than the health of households,” Hyatt said.
Greenville County saw rapid growth in its per capita income in the mid-1980s to 2000, even for a time surpassing the national average.
“Part of it may be there was a better match between the employment base here and the workforce here,” Hyatt said. Since then, he said, “The mid-level jobs have disappeared.”
Greensboro, one of Greenville’s peer metro areas and also a textile city, has the second worst per capita income among the metropolitan areas to which Greenville compares or inspires itself.
“We have legacy issues we’re dealing with and Greensboro is dealing with,” Hyatt said.
Part of the textile hangover
A much lower percentage of Greenville’s per capita income derives from wages and dividends than its peer cities, and a much larger percentage comes from government assistance, a study by Market Street Services in Atlanta has shown, Hyatt said.
The study was done in conjunction with ACCELERATE!, a Greenville Chamber initiative to promote economic growth in Greenville. ACCELERATE! investors are working on a new work plan being dubbed ACCELERATE! 2.0. The new approach will focus on five strategies – selling Greenville, growing new company headquarters, increasing capacity and performance of minority-owned businesses, championing a pro-business environment for all employers and leading catalytic projects.
David Hughes, a University of Tennessee economist who had been at Clemson University’s Center for Economic Development, said the higher percentage of government assistance comes from two entities: a larger retired population and a poorer population.
“It’s part of the textile hangover,” he said, noting the effect of the textile industry crash is still evident when driving into Greenville from Clemson on Hwy. 123.
Greenville’s growth may actually be working against it when it comes to per capita income, Hughes said.
“When the economy is growing, people come looking for work and that tends to lower per capita income,” he said. “In a way, it’s a good sign. Austin, Texas, had the same phenomenon. Greenville is doing a lot of the right things. It just needs to enhance those efforts.”
Education is key
Education is a big part of the key, Hughes said.
Taylor agrees.
“It’s simple math,” he said. As a person’s educational attainment rises, so does his income, and the likelihood of unemployment falls. As an area’s per capita income rises, so does its economic growth, Taylor said.
“In order for the Upstate to prosper, we have to move the educational water line,” he said.
Taylor recalled overhearing a woman at a convenience store last week talking about her 17-year-old son pressuring her to sign papers that would allow him to drop out of school.
“He’d be signing his economic death sentence,” Taylor said.
Working-age adults without a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 11 percent compared to 6.1 percent for all workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, workers without a high school diploma have average weekly earnings of $472.
For high school graduates, average weekly wages are $651 and the unemployment rate falls to 7.5 percent.
“That’s a 37.9 percent pay raise just for getting your high school diploma,” Taylor said, noting in today’s workplace, a 5 percent raise is great these days.
Results are similar for every rung of the education ladder a person climbs up, Taylor said. In addition to higher pay, increased education leads to an increase in entrepreneurship and innovation, he said. “This is how prosperous areas of the country are prosperous.”
In Greenville County, 30 to 32 percent of residents have some type of college degree, Taylor said (for a period of time, it was 28 percent), while about 42,000 residents have some college but no degree. That number grows to between 80,000 and 90,000 people when contiguous counties are added, he said.
The study conducted by the University Center in 2013 found that 50 percent of Greenville residents with an associate degree want a bachelor’s degree. Sixty-two percent of Greenville residents with a bachelor’s degree want a master’s degree.
The University Center is a consortium of seven colleges and universities – USC Upstate, the University of South Carolina, Clemson University, Furman University, Greenville Technical College, South Carolina State University and Anderson University – that offer programs at the former McAlister Square shopping mall.
“Education is the only way to increase per capita income. You can’t bring businesses in to do it. As a community, we still don’t get it,” Taylor said. The University Center will hold its next College Opportunity Fair on Oct. 21 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Hughes said programs to keep students in school need to start as early as possible. A new initiative to that end was announced last week by The United Way of Greenville County, Greenville County Schools and the Riley Institute at Furman University, which are partnering to launch a new early warning and response system in the middle schools in the White Horse Road corridor.
The program, paid for through a $3 million federal grant that could grow to $15 million through matching funds, will identify students showing signs of disengaging from school and match them with community organizations that can address issues at the root of the problem.
Greenville can take heart that per capita income is increasing, Hyatt said. “But we can do better.”
