Memphis’s Job Engine Is Still Shelby County. The Question Is Who’s Next.

Memphis’s labor market is often treated as if it were a single unit, but the jobs that support the region are heavily concentrated in a handful of counties. Understanding that map matters for anyone betting on where new logistics, manufacturing or data infrastructure can realistically go next.

On the jobs side, Shelby County is the undisputed anchor. The county supports an annual average of 482,470 covered jobs as of 2024, by far the largest employment base in the region ¹. The surrounding counties are an order of magnitude smaller: DeSoto County in Mississippi is the largest secondary node at 72,666 covered jobs, while Crittenden County in Arkansas has 16,197, Marshall County in Mississippi 11,291, Tipton County in Tennessee 11,848, and Fayette County in Tennessee 8,093 ²³⁴⁵⁶. Tate and Tunica counties round out the map with 6,361 and 5,799 covered jobs respectively ⁷⁸.

Business formation follows a similar pattern. Shelby County hosts 24,468 business establishments on an annual-average basis in 2024 ¹. DeSoto County again emerges as the main suburban employer base, with 3,754 establishments, while Crittenden stands at 1,096, Fayette at 823 and Tipton at 962 ²³⁶⁵. Smaller but growing business communities sit in Marshall (566 establishments), Tate (446) and Tunica (270) counties ⁴⁷⁸. The takeaway: Shelby remains the metro’s job and firm hub, DeSoto is the clear second center of employment, and the rest of the counties are much thinner labor markets that may still matter for specific types of projects that prioritize land or access over scale.

Wages help explain how these different submarkets are positioned. Average weekly pay in 2024 is highest in Shelby County at $1,375, followed by Fayette County at $1,098 and Crittenden County at $919 ¹⁶³. On the Mississippi side, Marshall’s average weekly wage is $935, while DeSoto’s is $879 and Tunica’s is $802 ⁴²⁸. Tipton County’s average weekly wage is $967 ⁵. These differences do not, by themselves, say which locations are better or worse for investment, but they do signal distinct labor-cost profiles that employers will weigh against access and infrastructure.

At the metro scale, the broader labor market is sizeable and fully engaged by national standards. The Memphis MSA’s civilian labor force runs in the low 600,000s according to BLS regional data, with employment just below that and unemployment in the mid‑20‑thousands, implying a mid-single-digit jobless rate ⁹⁹⁹⁹. Those figures place a ceiling on how many workers can be drawn locally for large new projects without triggering tighter labor conditions, unless migration or commuting patterns shift.

Logistics remains the most distinctive feature of the Memphis economy, and the airport is the clearest expression of that. Memphis’s Frederick W. Smith International Airport is described by the airport operator as one of the busiest cargo airports in North America and globally ¹⁰. FedEx alone employs more than 11,000 people at its Memphis hub and leases over 34 million square feet on airport property ¹⁰. The company reports operating almost 400 flights per day at the hub and handling more than 180,000 packages and 245,000 documents per hour ¹⁰. UPS also maintains a significant presence, with a campus of roughly 134 acres at the airport ¹⁰. These are not abstract statistics: they are a physical concentration of jobs, freight volume and real estate that anchors the region’s industrial development.

If that cargo backbone continues to hold or grow, it could make the surrounding counties’ employment bases more consequential than their current size suggests. DeSoto’s combination of more than 70,000 covered jobs, nearly 3,800 establishments and lower average weekly wages than Shelby gives it room to absorb logistics, warehouse and light industrial projects that either cannot find space in Shelby or prefer a different cost structure ²²². Crittenden’s 16,000‑plus covered jobs and just over 1,000 establishments, paired with its proximity across the river, position it as another potential release valve if demand for land and facilities near the airport remains strong ³³.

Smaller counties such as Marshall, Tate, Tipton, Fayette and Tunica will likely matter most for projects that can operate with thinner local labor pools but prioritize access to the freight network or large tracts of land. Marshall’s covered employment has grown from 10,660 in 2022 to 11,291 in 2024, with business establishments rising from 511 to 566 over the same period ⁴⁴. DeSoto shows a similar pattern at a larger scale, with covered employment increasing from 70,216 to 72,666 and establishments from 3,450 to 3,754 between 2022 and 2024 ²². Tipton and Tate have seen employment and establishment counts edge up as well ⁵⁵⁷⁷. Those moves are modest in absolute terms but show that employment is not static on the region’s edge.

Shelby County itself has seen covered employment drift slightly down from 493,623 in 2022 to 482,470 in 2024 even as establishment counts have risen from 23,518 to 24,468 over the same period ¹¹. That combination—more establishments, marginally fewer covered jobs—could reflect changing industry mix, firm size, or other dynamics that are not fully visible in this data alone. It does underscore the editorial question this publication is interested in: is the metro assembling enough new anchors and corridors to support a stronger next cycle, or is it mainly reshuffling activity within an already‑built logistics footprint?

None of the evidence here answers that question definitively. What it does show is a region with a dominant core county, a particularly important Mississippi counterpart, and a set of smaller labor markets around the edge that have been adding jobs and firms at a measured pace. It also shows a freight platform at the airport scale that is already operating at a level few metros can match, with FedEx and UPS investing heavily in people, flights and land at the hub ^10101010. If future capital keeps targeting that logistics spine, the counties with the most room to grow into it are likely to be the ones with the largest existing employment bases and establishment counts just below Shelby—primarily DeSoto and, to a lesser degree, Crittenden—along with specific sites in smaller counties that can connect efficiently into the network.

From here, any stronger claim about where development will concentrate next would require additional evidence: committed project announcements, infrastructure investments, site plans, permitting data, and details on which subsectors (advanced manufacturing, data centers, healthcare or others) are actually putting capital at risk. Until then, the safest conclusion this data supports is that Memphis’s job engine remains centered on Shelby County, that DeSoto is the primary secondary node, and that the freight backbone around the airport is a real and substantial asset whose future trajectory will matter for every county that touches it.