KCRag Forum

moderne wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:48 pm When is earliest of 2020 census reports?

In 2010 they announced the population and apportionment on Dec 21

T-Mobile announced today at KCADC that they plan to add 5,000 jobs over the next few years. The exact count for KC was not shared other than a significant % will be here and it is including high-tech jobs. T-Mobile reports that its tech groups in KC have grown over the past 12 months.

that's nice, hope it all happens. The better high end jobs they can bring here helps create the job market you want and can have ripple effects into all of the jobs/labor in the area. Keep adding great opportunities, it's key to the growth and health of the city

KC metro had 30K telcom jobs when Sprint was at it's peak back around 2000. SW Bell/ATT also used to have several thousand in metro. Now under 4K telcom jobs for metro. Hopefully Tmobile can spin the trend upward again.

Telecom is a lot less labor intensive than pre 2000. I wouldn't expect much growth.

Causes of the decline.
From 1992 to 2001 fiber system capacity doubled every six months. This dramatically dropped labor needs because a bundle of hundreds of copper lines became a single fiber optic cable.

Cordless phones replaced paying for a jack in every room and VoIP replaced running a separate cable network with 66 and 110 blocks for businesses

The Fax Machine and Modem led to adding second lines and DSL and Cable undid the need.

Then the cell phone replaced millions of home phone lines.

And in the same era service became about self-service setup through improved technology, eliminating the setup call.

2019 Population from American Community Survey:

KCMO: 495,278
Overland Park: 195,483
Jackson County: 703,011
Johnson County: 602401

St. Louis City: 300,576
St. Louis County: 994,205

Looks like the KC CSA 2019 number is: 2,501,151

That puts us at 27th largest CSA for 2019. We were 24th in 2010. We are sadly growing much slower than our peers. Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany are the only top 50 CSA's that shrank.

normalthings wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:25 am Looks like the KC CSA 2019 number is: 2,501,151

That puts us at 27th largest CSA for 2019. We were 24th in 2010. We are sadly growing much slower than our peers. Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany are the only top 50 CSA's that shrank.

They shrank or fell in the rankings?

shinatoo wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 9:50 am

normalthings wrote: ↑Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:25 am Looks like the KC CSA 2019 number is: 2,501,151

That puts us at 27th largest CSA for 2019. We were 24th in 2010. We are sadly growing much slower than our peers. Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany are the only top 50 CSA's that shrank.

They shrank or fell in the rankings?

They shrank as in have less people than they did in 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area

Columbus passed KC CSA, both Columbus and Indy growing faster than KC region. Not surprising given they get rust belt exodus, have major universities and having state capitol probably helps.

KC metro continues to see a recovery.

3.8% YoY loss for November employment.
4% YoY loss for October employment.

STL continues to see an improvement. Just down 4.8% now YoY for November.

Austin continues to improve. Just down 1.1% YoY.

Indianapolis is back to loosing jobs. Down 2.2% YOY November.

Nashville is loosing more jobs. Down 5.2% YOY November.

earthling wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 6:11 pm KC metro had 30K telcom jobs when Sprint was at it's peak back around 2000. SW Bell/ATT also used to have several thousand in metro. Now under 4K telcom jobs for metro. Hopefully Tmobile can spin the trend upward again.

Does AT&T even use that monstrosity downtown for anything these days? Half of it has been boarded up on the lower floors for over a month and the building itself has never looked great.

empires228 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 3:17 am

earthling wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 6:11 pm KC metro had 30K telcom jobs when Sprint was at it's peak back around 2000. SW Bell/ATT also used to have several thousand in metro. Now under 4K telcom jobs for metro. Hopefully Tmobile can spin the trend upward again.

Does AT&T even use that monstrosity downtown for anything these days? Half of it has been boarded up on the lower floors for over a month and the building itself has never looked great.

Town Pavillion was built for 100% ATT.

Lots of ATT/SW Bell/Sprint local/LDX jobs have been lost in KC last 20 years as those services diminished. Sprint spun off local exchange division to Embarq, which Centurylink acquired and pretty much shifted the KC jobs elsewhere, was diminishing industry anyway. And then Sprint's wireless division on life support for over a decade on top of that.

earthling wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 2:40 pm Lots of ATT/SW Bell/Sprint local/LDX jobs have been lost in KC last 20 years as those services diminished. Sprint spun off local exchange division to Embarq, which Centurylink acquired and pretty much shifted the KC jobs elsewhere, was diminishing industry anyway.

For clarity, the total telco service didn't diminish, just the labor required to provide service. Outsourcing didn't create that problem, it just moved where jobs were at.

I remember changing one service from multiple bonded T1s to 30mbit fiber. 100mbit fiber service has the same internet capacity as 66 T1s. That's a lot of infrastructure that was being abandoned with the switch to fiber.

Elsewhere, Verizon all but said they couldn't afford the labor to repair damaged copper services after Hurricane Sandy (I think that was the storm). They replaced it with fiber during recovery

That's a lot less infrastructure to build and maintain if 100,000 customers make the same type of switch.


Here's a piece from three years ago where AT&T said 100,000 workers were in jobs where the hardware probably wouldn't exist in ten years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/atts-1- ... force.html

normalthings wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 12:22 pm

empires228 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 3:17 am

earthling wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 6:11 pm KC metro had 30K telcom jobs when Sprint was at it's peak back around 2000. SW Bell/ATT also used to have several thousand in metro. Now under 4K telcom jobs for metro. Hopefully Tmobile can spin the trend upward again.

Does AT&T even use that monstrosity downtown for anything these days? Half of it has been boarded up on the lower floors for over a month and the building itself has never looked great.

Town Pavillion was built for 100% ATT.

Yes, I know, but they also have the older structure over behind T-Mobile that’s uglier than sin. Actually it wouldn’t be terrible if it terminated at like the fifth floor, but it looks abandoned with all the boards and such at the moments

4.6% November unemployment. Laborforce looks to be around the same as November 2018

^In comparison to US labor force down to 2017 level. Though KC labor force nearly 19K lower compared to a year ago.
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LAUMT29 ... raphs=true

earthling wrote: ↑Tue Jan 05, 2021 1:44 pm ^In comparison to US labor force down to 2017 level. Though KC labor force nearly 19K lower compared to a year ago.
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LAUMT29 ... raphs=true

KC Labforce was unusually high during winter 2019-2020. Why was that?

empires228 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 05, 2021 2:28 am

normalthings wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 12:22 pm

empires228 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 30, 2020 3:17 am

Does AT&T even use that monstrosity downtown for anything these days? Half of it has been boarded up on the lower floors for over a month and the building itself has never looked great.

Town Pavillion was built for 100% ATT.

Yes, I know, but they also have the older structure over behind T-Mobile that’s uglier than sin. Actually it wouldn’t be terrible if it terminated at like the fifth floor, but it looks abandoned with all the boards and such at the moments

It's called a Longlines building, and there is one in nearly every major American city. One was just bombed in Nashville. It's there for a reason, and isn't going anywhere. They're purposely built to look as described. I'm guessing you weren't around for the years where it had a massive array of antennas and satellite dishes stacked on a tower on the roof? If you want to complain about "ugly", then that was the time.