Research
White Papers on the Regional Economy
- WP18 - Electricity Affordability in Tennessee, 2010-24
This paper examines trends in electricity affordability in Tennessee relative to similar states in the South. Affordability is measured by the median household’s electricity burden, or the share of its annual income spent on electricity. Despite relatively sharp increases in prices since 2020, the average electricity burden across the comparison states has fallen since 2010 because household incomes have been rising. Specifically, the average burden across comparison states fell from 3.4 percent in 2010 to 2.6 percent in 2024. The electricity burden for Tennessee fell by one percentage point over the period and the median Tennessee household spent 2.6 percent of its income on electricity in 2024. Using standard thresholds, about 17 percent of Tennessee households were either highly or severely burdened by their electricity spending.
- WP17 - Where Y'all From? Chattanooga's Domestic Migration, 2021-25
This paper by summarizes the geographic pattern of domestic migration in and out of the Chattanooga MSA for 2021-2025. About 86,000 people moved into the MSA and 69,000 moved out of it, resulting in net migration of 17,000. Nearly half of all in-migrants came from California or elsewhere in Tennessee. Florida and Georgia were the next largest providers of migrants. More than 41 percent of all people who migrated out of the Chattanooga MSA moved to Tennessee, and Florida and Georgia were the destinations of another 15 percent of Chattanooga out-migrants. Net migration was dominated by California and Illinois, which accounted for more than half of the net migration into the Chattanooga MSA.
- WP16 - From Modest Gains to Modest Losses: Chattanooga Employment Revised Downward
On April 10th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released revised estimates of metro-area nonfarm employment. These annual benchmark revisions meant a reduction of 3,300 in the BLS’s estimate of the number of jobs in December 2025 in the Chattanooga metro area. As a result of the revisions, which affect estimates back to early 2024, data now indicate that Chattanooga employment peaked in June 2024 and trended downward since. What had been estimated as a modest gain of 1,100 jobs over an 18-month period is now estimated to have been a modest loss of 1,900 jobs. The main sources of the downward revisions and the job losses were the Manufacturing and Professional and Business Services industries.
- WP15 - Population Growth in the Chattanooga Region, 2020-2025
This paper describes the latest population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau for the United States, the region surrounding Chattanooga, and the Chattanooga metro area. Along with other areas in central and eastern Tennessee, the Chattanooga metro area saw its population grow at more than twice the national rate between 2020 and 2025, and it should cross the 600,000 threshold sometime in the late summer of 2026. The main source of this growth was net migration from other areas of the country. As a group, the metro area’s three Tennessee counties grew by 6.6 percent, with a 5 percent rate of domestic migration. The three Georgia counties grew by only 2.8 percent, but had a 4.5 percent rate of domestic migration. International migration was the main source of population growth for the country as a whole, but was a relatively minor factor in the Chattanooga region. Even so, the relatively small foreign-born population in the Chattanooga metro area grew by about 25 percent.
- WP14 - The Composition of Housing in the Chattanooga Region
This paper examines links between demographics and housing trends in the Chattanooga metro area between 2014 and 2024. A gap between the growth in the number of households and the growth in housing units lowered vacancy rates and put pressure on prices. In addition, the relatively strong population growth and demographic transformation of the period affected the types and locations of new housing. Specifically, townhouses and apartment buildings with 20 or more units became more prevalent, especially in the city of Chattanooga. In terms of housing size, there were two opposing trends: An increase in the number of people living alone has meant a relatively large increase in small homes, but higher incomes have meant an increased demand for larger homes.
- WP13 - From Gig City to Quantum City
Chattanooga is home to the nation’s first commercial quantum network, the EPB Quantum Network℠, which will accelerate the commercialization of quantum technology, aligning local job creation efforts with national priorities. With quantum networking set to be a cornerstone of secure global communications and distributed quantum computing, the local quantum network is expected to be a key enabler of the broader quantum economy and make a quantum global internet achievable. Strategic partnerships between EPB, IonQ, ORNL and UTC make Chattanooga a likely future quantum hub, bringing as much as $1.1 billion in output, income, and taxes as well as over 2,000 new jobs to the region by 2035.
- 2025 WP8 - WP12: Wage trends, Poverty, Occupations, Housing affordability, Broadband
- WP12 - How Does High-Speed Broadband Benefit a Community?
Chattanooga was the first city in the country to roll out citywide gigabit-speed broadband in 2010, and the benefits of this infrastructure have been widespread and substantial. The benefits have come in the form of greater economic output and local taxes, along with benefits to consumers and to the region as a whole through media coverage. A recent study (Lobo and Plank, 2025) estimated that the value of high-speed broadband to the community exceeded $3.9 billion over the period 2011-2025. The effects are manifest in smart city initiatives and economic development, as well as technological innovations in public works, healthcare, education, and entertainment.
- WP11 - Housing Affordability Trends in Chattanooga
This paper examines housing affordability in the Chattanooga metro area. It looks at a variety of measures of housing affordability that account for increases in the median price, rising household incomes, smaller housing units, and the sharp increase in mortgage rates. It concludes that house affordability remains a problem relative to the pre-pandemic period, but that faster-than-average income growth has significantly lessened the effect of higher prices. High mortgage rates remain the biggest obstacle for returning to pre-crisis levels of affordability.
- WP10 - Has a Jobs Boom Meant a Poverty Bust for Chattanooga?
This paper looks at the extent to which the recent jobs boom in the Chattanooga metro area has translated into a corresponding reduction in poverty. Following the national trend, Chattanooga’s official poverty rate fell significantly between 2013 and 2023. For the working-age population, the local poverty rate fell by more than the national one, but for those younger than 18, poverty did not fall as much locally as it did nationally. Finally, a large part of the decrease in the local poverty rate was because of in-migration of people with bachelor’s degrees rather than a decrease in core poverty.
- WP9 - What Do Chattanoogans Do For a Living?
This paper describes the Chattanooga metro area economy in terms of the occupations of its residents. Looking at employment from the perspective of occupations rather than industries provides a better picture of the skills, training, and job types that underlie the economy. The largest occupation groups are fairly general in that they are found in significant numbers across most industries. Unsurprisingly, earnings are typically highest for occupations where a bachelor’s degree or higher is expected. However, given that 70 percent of workers are in occupations where a bachelor’s degree is not typical, the region’s high schools, vocational training, and community colleges should not be overlooked.
- WP8 - Wages in Chattanooga: Measurement, Trends, and Composition
This paper analyzes wage trends in the Chattanooga metro area between 2001 and 2023. Throughout this period, wages in the area were below those for the country as a whole. The first half of the period, which had two recessions, saw Chattanooga’s real median wage fall while the country’s rose. During the second half, however, median wage growth was significantly higher locally. Real wages in Chattanooga rose across the wage distribution between 2012 and 2023, with especially strong growth at the lower end. Chattanooga’s wage inequality was lower than the country’s throughout 2001-2023 and plunged after the COVID pandemic. When account is taken of Chattanooga’s relatively low cost of living, its effective real median wage in 2023 is less than a dollar below the national level.
- 2024 WP1 - WP7: Employment trends, Recessions, Regional linkages, Demographics, Young migrants
- WP7 - The Geography and Demographics of the Chattanooga Jobs Boom
Previous CRER research described how employment growth in the Chattanooga metro area from 2014 to 2022 was spread across demographic groups. This paper extends that research by comparing the effects across parts of the metro area and across demographic groups within each part. For most categories, the changes in the city of Chattanooga differ from those in the rest of the metro area. For example, the city’s large employment gains were driven by astounding gains for workers younger than 25, especially those with a college degree. Also, unlike the rest of the metro area, the increase in the rate of employment for white workers was much larger than it was for black workers.
- WP6 - Origins and Destinations of Chattanooga's Young Adult Migrants
This paper uses a unique dataset on the migration of young adults between commuting zones to analyze the most common origins and destinations of Chattanooga’s young adult migrants. Many more young adults moved into Chattanooga than moved out of it, but Chattanooga’s net in-migration rate was much lower than those for large areas such as Nashville and Atlanta. Generally, there was a hierarchy of migration according to area size: Chattanooga received many more young adult migrants from small areas nearby but sent many more to large areas both near and far away. Parental income was strongly related to the likelihood of migration and the destinations and origins of Chattanooga’s young adult migrants.
- WP5 - The Demographics of Chattanooga Employment Growth
The Chattanooga metro economy has experienced higher-than-average employment growth for the past decade. This paper examines how this manufacturing-led boom has meant higher employment to population ratios for every major demographic category, despite the major disruption of the COVID pandemic. It finds that the benefits of Chattanooga’s boom have been felt by every age group, race, and education level examined. The biggest gains were experienced by those aged 20 to 44, men, African Americans, and those with a college degree or high school diploma as their highest education. Other notable observations include that, by 2022, blacks and whites in Chattanooga were about as likely to be employed, and the largest employment gap between Chattanooga and the rest of the country is for those with less than a high school diploma.
- WP4 - The Past Ain't What it Used to Be: Chattanooga Employment Revised Upward
In March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released revised estimates of state and metro area nonfarm employment. As a result, more than 4 thousand jobs were added to the estimated total employment in the Chattanooga metro area. Revisions of this sort are an annual occurrence and can lead to dramatic changes in what we think happened in the past. This year’s revisions, for example, indicate that three-year job growth for 2021-2023 was 25.9 thousand rather than the already booming 21.6 thousand. These numbers will be revised again in a year when estimates for 2021 and 2022 are subject to routine tweaking and the estimates for 2023 get new benchmarks. Revisions of the scale seen this year are not unusual, but they have become more common since the COVID pandemic.
- WP3 - Recession and Recovery in Chattanooga, 1990-2023
Although recessions are usually thought of as national-level events, there can be substantial differences across states and metro areas in when they occur. This paper determines and compares the timing of recessions for Chattanooga and four nearby metro areas. In part because it experienced its own recession in 1997, recession has been more common in Chattanooga than elsewhere since 1990. This fact combined with its relatively large manufacturing sector and relatively small education and health sector has meant that Chattanooga’s job losses during recessions have tended to be larger than average. Chattanooga’s continuing reliance on manufacturing suggests that future recessions will be as costly as past ones. On the other hand, area’s manufacturing sector has been transformed and is much more competitive than during previous recessions.
- WP2 - Economic "Causality" Among Chattanooga and its Regional Neighbors
Chattanooga is situated at the literal crossroads between Atlanta, Birmingham, Knoxville, and Nashville, whose combined employment growth rate over the past 10 years was nearly double the national average. A full understanding of the Chattanooga metro economy requires an understanding of how it interacts with these large metro areas in its booming region. This paper tries to untangle the interregional links by testing for Granger-causality, or predictability, between metro areas within the region. It finds that higher growth in the Atlanta, Knoxville, and Nashville metro areas tends to be followed by higher growth in the Chattanooga metro area. The signs and magnitudes of these effects are useful for forecasting the near future of the Chattanooga labor market.
- WP1 - Chattanooga Metro Employment, 1990-2023: Decline, Recovery, and Transformation
Over the past decade, the Chattanooga economy has undergone a manufacturing-led resurgence and has experienced job growth that has been significantly higher than the national average. Over the period, the manufacturing sector changed from one dominated by non-durable goods such as food to one dominated by durable goods such as automobiles. This recent resurgence is in contrast with the overall performance of the Chattanooga economy since 1990. Between then and the end of 2023, the total number of non-farm jobs grew by about 75 thousand but would have grown by almost 90 thousand if the area had grown as fast as the rest of the country. Other than the COVID recession, Chattanooga was hit harder by recessions than was the rest of the country, and it even had its own recession in the mid-1990s.