“Workforce” was the word of the day last month at the University of Georgia’s Biennial Institute, where hundreds of legislators, other state officials and lobbyists gather every two years to learn from experts about issues coming before the General Assembly.
Literacy, child care, health care, mental health, energy and artificial intelligence were among the topics covered during the three-day conference, held at the Center for Continuing Education Dec. 8–10. In addition, Gov. Brian Kemp announced in his keynote speech that tax cuts, tort reform, funds for recovering from Hurricane Helene, combating human trafficking and relief from inflation will be his top priorities for the legislative session, which began Jan. 13 and runs for 40 working days (usually until late March or early April).
The action will take place against the backdrop of an aging state where growth is primarily driven by people moving to Georgia seeking jobs, rather than births. It’s also a state that remains red politically, although one where Democrats can win under the right circumstances, so even though Republicans remain in power, they will have to resist the urge to overreach if they want to stay there.
Demographics
Georgia’s population more than doubled between 1970–2010, from 4.6 million to 9.6 million, with 3 million of those added between 1990–2010, according to Taylor Hafley, an applied demographer at UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Since then that growth has slowed, but Georgia remains the 13th fastest-growing state. In terms of raw numbers, Georgia has added more people than any state except North Carolina, Florida and Texas since 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
By 2050, Georgia is expected to grow from 11 million people to 13.5 million, but the growth rate is projected to slow to 4% from 10%. However, that would still outpace the national growth rate of 1%.
That growth is mainly driven by migration. Births have fallen from a high of 151,000 in 2007 to 125,000 in 2023. People are waiting longer to have children, so they’re also having fewer of them, according to Hafley. Meanwhile, deaths spiked from 86,000 in 2019 to 112,000 in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, but have since fallen to 97,000. Net births over deaths have fallen from 60,000 in 2011 to 30,000 in 2023.
That’s about the same net number of people who migrated to Georgia from another country in 2023. Meanwhile, domestic migration added a net 60,000 people. Two-thirds of those people moved to Georgia from one of just 10 states: Florida, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, New York, California, Virginia or Illinois. For the most part, those are also the states Georgians who leave are moving to.
The fastest growth is happening in metro Atlanta, the North Georgia mountains and the Savannah area, while Middle and South Georgia counties are mostly stagnant or losing population. Three of the 10 fastest-growing counties are near Athens—Oconee (27.4% growth since 2010), Jackson (25.5%) and Barrow (20.4%). Clarke County fell just outside the top 10 but still grew at a more than 10% clip.
Georgia’s population is getting more diverse, with minorities poised to become a majority soon. In 1980, the breakdown was 72% white, 27% Black and 1% other. In 2021, it was 51% white, 32% Black, 10% Hispanic and 7% other. Whites make up just 43% of Georgians under age 25, compared to 71% of those 75 and up.
“Even though we are aging, the economy is aging faster,” Hafley said. Just 729,000 out of 8.1 million Georgians were of retirement age (65-plus) in 2000. In 2020, it was 1.6 million out of 10.1 million, and by 2050 it will be 3 million out of 13.5 million.
Politics
Despite narrow victories for President Joe Biden and Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in 2020, and Warnock’s successful re-election campaign in 2022, Georgia remains red, according to UGA political science professor Charles Bullock.
“The default condition for Georgia is [that] this a Republican state,” Bullock told legislators over breakfast. “True, Democrats can win, have won, but under normal conditions, this is a Republican state.”
The old “30/30” rule for Georgia politics remains in effect—Democrats need the electorate to be 30% Black and to win 30% of the white vote. If 30% of white voters had cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris, “it’d have been very close. In fact, we’d probably still be counting ballots,” Bullock joked. But she won only 28% of whites, and the Black vote share was 29%. In addition, youth turnout was down.
Still, there is hope for Democrats in future elections, as their base in metro Atlanta continues to expand geographically. Fayette County will be the next to flip, Bullock predicted. “You have to run up your votes as a Democrat in metro Atlanta,” he said. But Harris didn’t do that—she won by smaller margins than Biden.
Meanwhile, Trump did run up the score in his strongest counties, like Cherokee, Forsyth, Hall, Coweta and Bartow on the outskirts of the Atlanta suburbs, primarily based on his popularity with non-college educated and evangelical whites. But Gov. Brian Kemp did even better in those areas in 2022. Trump “doesn’t have quite the pull that our homegrown Republicans do,” Bullock said. The 50.7% of the vote Trump received in Georgia last year “is not a blowout victory,” he said. “We do remain very competitive.”
That means Georgia voters can expect wall-to-wall campaign ads to continue. “You may want to invest in a streaming service,” Bullock said. “Either that or invest in WSB.”
Historically, the party that’s out of power does well in midterm elections, so Bullock said he expects Democrats to win back the U.S. House in 2026. “When the team is not doing well, things are struggling, what happens? You fire coach. Biden essentially pulled a Steve Spurrier,” he said, referring to the South Carolina coach who resigned midseason in 2015.
“One person who’s probably breathing a sigh of relief is Jon Ossoff,” Bullock said. “He doesn’t have to deal with Harris in the White House.”
Housing, Child Care and Literacy
Republicans are generally opposed to social safety-net programs, but one way to get them to sit up and pay attention is to talk about how costly child care and housing are impediments to businesses hiring workers.
For several years legislators have considered measures to bring down housing costs, such as banning local governments from enacting zoning regulations like large lot sizes that encourage expensive housing. But there are other ways, like tax incentives, for the state to spur affordable housing development.
“We do have a problem with housing in the state of Georgia, and trying to build ourselves out of it is going to be very difficult,” said state Rep. Debbie Buckner (D-Junction City).
Some of the challenges facing Gainesville are similar to those facing Athens, where the housing market is warped by the 30,000 UGA students living off campus and thousands of football fans who rent Airbnbs on gameday weekends. The city of 48,000 has no major university but three smaller colleges, and Lake Lanier draws 12 million visitors a year. Like Athens, it’s also a health care hub with large manufacturing and service-industry sectors.
Jessica Tullar, Gainesville’s housing and special projects manager, told Biennial Institute attendees that the city is using federal grants like HOME and Community Development Block Grants, the state-administered federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit and tax allocation districts to partner with the Gainesville Housing Authority and private developers to redevelop aging public housing and build new affordable housing. Houses under $400,000 are almost impossible to find except in Gainesville’s least desirable neighborhoods, Tullar said, but subsidized new housing in one Gainesville development is priced at $290,000.
Athens-Clarke County also receives HOME and CDBG grants, which it distributes to nonprofits like the Athens Land Trust and Habitat for Humanity to build infill housing and larger developments like Micah’s Creek in East Athens. The Athens Housing Authority has received LIHTC funds—which are very competitive—for projects like Columbia Brookside, the Bethel Midtown Village redevelopment and, more recently, developments slated for Hull Road and Atlanta Highway. A TAD is funding below-market housing at the Georgia Square Mall redevelopment by reinvesting taxes from new growth in the area back into the project.
Gainesville has also taken a step Athens-Clarke County has not by increasing density and simplifying the waiver process. “We’ve made it easier for developers to attain what they need to provide some housing affordability for our low-income residents,” Tullar said.
Child care expenses are another obstacle to work. A Senate study committee recently issued a report calling for tax credits for parents, child care educators and daycares to help offset costs, as well as potentially expanding pre-K to 3-year-olds and legislation protecting new and expecting parents from discrimination.
“Right now it costs more to have a baby in our state than tuition at one of our public colleges,” said Sen. Brian Strickland (R-McDonough), the chair of the study committee. About 35% of families spend at least a third of their income on child care, and 36% of parents left the workforce because of child care expenses.
“If you can’t find a safe, secure place to place your child while you work, you may decide that it’s not worth the effort given the cost,” said Sen. Sonya Halpern (D-Atlanta), adding that she spends more than her salary as a legislator on child care for her third grader.
Child care could be an area where lawmakers reach bipartisan agreement to spend some of Georgia’s $16 billion budget surplus. “If you invest now, you’ll spend less later,” Strickland said.
Access to quality child care would, over the years, help address a literacy crisis. More than 1 million Georgians lack basic literacy skills, according to Joyce Hawkins, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. “If you don’t have a foundation in literacy,” she said, “good luck.”
Children from low-income families have vocabularies that are 30,000 words smaller than those from higher-income families, according to Hawkins, setting them up for problems later in life. Students who can’t read by third grade are more likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty and possibly wind up incarcerated, she said.
“It’s not only a moral imperative—it’s good business,” Hawkins said. “The biggest barrier to employment is the inability to read.”
AI and Energy
One might jest that, in a room full of Georgia legislators, artificial intelligence would be the only intelligence there. Needless to say, at least some members of the General Assembly are excited about it. “Without question, this is going to cure cancer,” said Sen. John Albers (R-Roswell), chair of a study committee that released a report on AI in December.
“We believe that this will probably be the biggest thing that impacts our lifetimes,” he said, comparing it to the wheel rather than smartphones.
Albers and Rep. Brad Thomas (R-Holly Springs) said AI will lead to innovations not only in health care, but transportation, entertainment, literacy and manufacturing as well. While much of it is positive, there are downsides—like data privacy issues—so guardrails need to be in place. For example, 85% of people are concerned about deepfake videos influencing elections, said Thomas, the vice chair of the House Technology, Infrastructure and Innovation Committee.
As Georgia considers its AI policies, Chief Digital Officer Nikhil Deshpande said it’s imperative that humans remain involved in decision-making. AI must be used ethically and transparently, and privacy must be protected, he said. “We don’t want to unleash something and let the bots take over,” he said.
AI requires a lot of computing power, and the data centers popping all over Atlanta suck up a lot of energy. Along with reshoring manufacturing plants and the transition to electric vehicles, power demands are rising for the first time in 20 years, according to David Gattie, an engineering professor at UGA.
“Those data centers want to come to Georgia for a variety of reasons,” Gattie said. “One of them is power generation.”
But their power demands are putting upward pressure on rates, and Gattie advised policymakers to make sure the public is receiving a benefit in exchange. (Unlike a factory, data centers don’t directly create jobs.) “Don’t let them take the marginal electricity that’s the cheapest and not pay for the cost of capacity,” he said.
Despite two new reactors at Plant Vogtle coming online last year—at a cost of $35 billion—Georgia is “running low on power plant capacity,” Gattie said.
Natural gas has become “the workhorse” of Georgia’s power supply, Gattie said, making up 47% of Georgia’s energy supply, with 28% coming from nuclear, 13% coal, 6% solar and 2.5% hydroelectric. While the nation is transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner renewable energy, he said coal should remain part of the mix as a reliable backstop, while renewables provide energy at peak times. Coal can be stored onsite and isn’t as susceptible to supply problems as gas, which comes in by pipeline, he said. Some states with higher energy costs are having buyer’s remorse about shutting down coal plants, he said.
Gattie did not address the costs of climate change from burning fossil fuels or the health impact of generating more electricity. A recent study found that pollution from power plants and generators to run AI data centers could result in 1,300 premature deaths by 2030, with a public health cost of $20 billion.
Health Care
Georgia is already feeling the effects of the 2022 Mental Health Care Parity Act, which requires insurers to cover mental illness the same as physical illness, created loan cancellation and reimbursement programs for mental health and substance abuse professionals, but data sharing among siloed agencies remains a challenge, according to Elizabeth Holcomb, director of health strategy and coordination in the governor’s office. The legislature committed to spending $500 million over five years on mental health care.
“We have had a tremendous increase in investment in the system, and I think it’s starting to pay dividends,” said Kevin Tanner, commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.
The department currently has crisis centers at five hospitals, but eight more are needed, Tanner said. Three are currently under construction in Fulton County, Dublin and Augusta.
DBHDD is now fully staffed for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Tanner said, and all beds are available. But there are still shortages: 150 out of Georgia’s 159 counties lack enough mental health care providers, and the state is competing for doctors and nurses with the private sector, which offers higher pay and shorter hours.
“Today we have 769 people in jail waiting on a hospital bed,” Tanner said, adding that defendants facing misdemeanor charges were often staying in jail longer than if they had pleaded guilty. Nearly 100 forensic beds were scheduled to be brought online by the end of last year. DBHDD provides forensic services to courts to determine if defendants suffering from mental illness are competent to stand trial, and to treat them if they are not. A forensic workgroup was scheduled to submit recommendations to the legislature on the effects of untreated behavioral disorders on the criminal justice system and ways to support people transitioning out of it. The department’s first transitional facility recently opened in Savannah.
Tanner also discussed the opioid crisis—70% of overdoses are from opioids, primarily fentanyl—and the state’s $638 million share of a massive opioid settlement, 75% of which is going into a trust that will distribute grants, with the other 25% split among local governments.
The department’s 988 suicide hotline receives about 5,000 calls, texts and chats per week, up 17% over 2023, Tanner said, and more of them come from rural areas than urban. He attributed that to stigma, a fear of small-town gossip and lack of access to mental health care in rural communities.
Georgia is expanding health care in other ways, too, such as UGA’s new medical school (previously run in partnership with Augusta University) that will double the school’s size to 120 students per class over the next few years. The first class is expected to enroll in August 2026. In addition, a new medical and dental school is opening at Georgia Southern’s Savannah campus. “We do need to do better,” said Shelly Nuss, founding dean of the UGA medical school, “but we moved the needle.”
Georgia currently ranks 40th in physicians per capita, with just 20 per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 36, according Nuss. Dozens of counties lack psychiatrists, pediatricians, OB/GYNs and other specialists, and 10 counties have no physician at all. Twenty counties don’t have a dentist, and there is a need to add 13,000 nurses by 2030, she said.
UGA is already producing future doctors, just not necessarily in Georgia. The university ranks 9th in medical applicants, Nuss said. UGA also receives more National Institute of Health funding than any other university without a medical school.
The Trump administration will bring changes to health care, said Caylee Noggle, president and CEO of the Georgia Hospitals Association. Republicans are unlikely to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, as they nearly did during Trump’s first term, but enhanced ACA subsidies Democrats passed during the pandemic will expire in December, leaving 336,000 Georgians uninsured and facing an 85% increase in premiums.
Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services is Robert Kennedy Jr., a noted conspiracy theorist who has vowed to remove fluoride from drinking water. Noggle noted that the federal government has no authority to do that; still, no one is sure what Kennedy or Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick to oversee Medicaid and Medicare, will do. “There will be a lot of noise,” she said. Ultimately, though, decisions will come down to money, not ideology, she said. And many states that, unlike Georgia, accepted federal funds for Medicaid expansion supported Trump.
Getting doctors to accept Medicaid is already a challenge even before any cuts. It only pays 65% of the cost, so only 61% of doctors accept it, said Sen. Ben Watson (R-Savannah), a medical doctor. Watson also defended Kemp’s Pathways to Coverage program—instituted with a federal waiver in lieu of Medicaid expansion—despite just 4,000 people enrolling as of June. If people can’t meet the requirement to work 20 hours a week or go to school, they should file for disability, he said.
“Is Georgia going to be a model for the rest of the nation?” Watson said. “I think that’s very possible.”
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