Mobile has cast its lot with industry; should we?


  • August 24, 2014
  • /   William Rabb
  • /   economy,report-pensacola-metro-2014
This aerial photo shows the Port of Mobile. The city has had success in attracting large manufacturers.
When officials from the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce visited Pensacola recently, they oohed and ahhed about Pensacola’s thriving downtown business district, as well as the waterfront ballpark and its array of nearby restaurants and nightspots. These same Mobile officials were quick to remind the locals, however, that Mobile has had its share of successes of late, particularly attracting huge manufacturing plants. The Alabamians were in town at the invitation of Greater Pensacola Chamber President Jerry Maygarden. And that exchange has turned up the heat on a long-simmering debate, as Mobile seems to land one broad-shouldered industry after another: European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, with 1,000 jobs; the 2,000-job AM/NS Calvert steel mill, one of the largest and most advanced on the continent; not to mention other aerospace, ship-building and chemical industries in the Mobile area. While pleased with the blossoming downtown and signs of growth in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, Maygarden and others working on the area’s economic development realize that a strong downtown, spinoff companies and white beaches are not enough to sustain the future. So the question becomes: Why can’t we land more shiny, new manufacturing or high-tech employers over here? The answer is, says Maygarden, we’re working on it, but a lot of work remains. Broadly, there are four ideas that Mobile has embraced more than the Pensacola area has, and these are the difference between them and us — offering bigger incentives, building targeted industry clusters, investing tax dollars in public education, and investing in skilled workforce training. These findings are based on state and federal data, and interviews with dozens of local and regional officials, manufacturing company leaders, economists and university professors. For decades, Northwest Florida “was fat and happy to rely on tourism and the military,” said Jennifer Landrum Grove, Gulf Power Co.’s workforce development coordinator. But while we weren’t looking, Mobile, always a blue-collar town, expanded its love affair with jobs that required sweat, steel and skills. “As an outside observer, I can say that whatever Alabama is doing seems to be very successful,” said Michael Huggins, interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of West Florida. If the Pensacola area doesn’t move more in that direction, our pool of qualified workers “will be swallowed up” by southern Alabama’s growing industrial base, said Tony Fiorentino, president of Marianna Airmotive, a Cantonment company that builds and refurbishes components for the C-5 Galaxy, the Air Force’s largest cargo plane. “It’s going to drain us.” The Panhandle already is facing a critical shortage of skilled workers, including plumbers, metal fabricators, electricians and more, according to the Northwest Florida Manufacturers Council. The 12-county region from Escambia to Franklin counties will need at least 3,400 new and replacement workers in the next five years, but only about 860 will be produced through existing schools and training programs, council projections show. South Alabama, on the other hand, has gone whole hog to provide skilled workers for its manufacturing base, and that makes it a good place for Escambia to look for ideas.

Manufacturing is Mobile’s advantage

Mobile County is a fair comparison for the Pensacola area, with similar demographics, education levels, and pockets of poverty and population size. By almost every measure, Escambia County’s economic numbers are slightly better than Mobile County’s and have been for years:
  • Per-capita income in Escambia is slightly higher.
  • Median household income is almost $44,000, about $1,000 higher.
  • The percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees, and the percentage that finished high school, is a full three points higher here, according to 2013 U.S. Census data.
  • Unemployment in the Pensacola metro area for April, the latest figures available, was 5.6 percent, significantly better than the Mobile metropolitan area, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  • Over the last five years, the Pensacola area has added more than 5,000 jobs, while the total number of employees in the Mobile area has remained essentially flat since the end of 2009, according to UWF’s Office of Economic Development and Engagement, which analyzes federal data.
In one category, Mobile County has far outpaced the Pensacola area: Manufacturing. Census data show that manufacturing shipments in Mobile were six times the number here, topping $12 billion in 2013. Manufacturing employment has rebounded in Mobile in recent years, almost reaching levels not seen since the early 2000s, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by the UWF Office of Economic Development and Engagement. As labor costs rise in China, and North American energy costs drop, more and more of those manufacturing, assembly and related operations are coming stateside, economists say. Mobile County has perfectly positioned itself to capitalize on that trend. “Mobile and Alabama love their heavy industry and skilled trades. But Florida for a long time pretty much gave up on getting kids into skilled trades,” said Grove, who has studied workforce needs for years. “We thought we wanted all kids to go to college, and have more knowledge workers in Florida.” Mobile County and Alabama have made three major pushes in recent years:
  • Massive incentives packages for manufacturing companies, including tax breaks, direct subsidies and government development of industrial parks known as megasites.
  • Changes in public education, with tax increases for schools, and a major push for more non-college career paths for students.
  • More emphasis on workforce development and skilled labor, including state-funded training for companies, and a statewide marketing campaign to steer more youth into skilled trades.
It all began in 1993 when Mercedes-Benz built a state-of-the art manufacturing plant in Vance, Ala., near Tuscaloosa, said James Cover, an economics professor at the University of Alabama. “The entire state was changed by this plant.” When Mercedes agreed to locate in Alabama, thanks in large part to the most-expensive incentive package then seen in the United States, “it changed the entire perception of the state among people in heavy industry,” Cover said. The $600 million Airbus plant, now under construction in Mobile, is the culmination of that two-decade-long industrial offensive in Alabama, Cover and others have said. Escambia and Santa Rosa counties now find themselves playing catch-up, wondering what we can do to attract similar operations here. “Why can’t we get an Airbus here? For one thing, I don’t have any place to put them,” said Scott Luth, senior vice president for economic development at the Pensacola Chamber. Indeed, Airbus and 75 other commercial and light industrial operations in Mobile are built on a closed U.S. Air Force base, Brookley Field. When Brookley closed in 1969, and eliminated almost 10 percent of the jobs in Mobile, it took the Port City years to bounce back. “By 2001, we still had not recovered from the closing of Brookley,” said Carolyn Akers, a longtime education leader in Mobile. Since then, though, the Mobile area has made the changes that have put it on the map for heavy industry and aerospace. For the Pensacola area to offer a similar aerospace industrial site, with a 9,000-foot runway and barge access, would require closing Pensacola Naval Air Station — or building something similar.
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