It’s no secret that at the foundation of Coastal Mississippi’s success is gaming, government contracts, and military bases.
The casinos in Harrison and Hancock counties rake in around $1.6 billion annually, employing thousands with over 9,000 direct jobs and another 18,000 or so tied to the ripple effect. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula employs around 11,000 focused on building warships with another 15,000 or so tied to the ripple. Stennis Space Center has over 5,000 highly paid, smart folks testing rockets and so much more in that critically important federal city that is too often out of sight and out of mind. Add another 4,500 jobs tied to the ripple there, too. In Gulfport, Keesler Air Force Base and Naval Battalion Center have a significant economic impact of well over $1 billion annually, resulting in approximately 25,000 direct or indirect jobs.
Just last week, Bollinger Shipyards snagged $951 million through a federal contract modification to build Polar Security Cutters – America’s first heavy icebreakers in half a century – once again proving that shipbuilding has been part of our core since Ingalls was started in the 1930s.
All of this makes for real money and real jobs. But if we think it will be enough to carry us into the future, we’re kidding ourselves. We’ve got all our eggs in virtually two baskets – gaming and government – and that makes us vulnerable.
Gaming has undoubtedly been a golden goose. But we know from experience that we’re just a bad hurricane, a shift in tourist tastes, or a national recession away from those slot machines going quiet. Revenue is strong, but we’ve seen contraction in the state. The costs of acquiring customers are rising. Casinos took a catastrophic hit from Hurricane Katrina, but they rebuilt for the most part. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they were challenged again. And don’t forget we’re competing with every other gaming jurisdiction from Las Vegas to local tribal lands. It’s a competitive industry, and we’re not the only ones playing at the table. We are seeing markets across the U.S. build strength. Add to that a growth in online betting, something Mississippi is missing out on.
Let me hit something critical: Coastal Mississippi is holding its own as a regional market, and honestly, we’ve done damn well. But we’re up against sharp competition from places leaning hard into online platforms, mobile sports betting, and broader entertainment options. Take Florida as an example – they’re jumping on digital trends fast. Meanwhile, Mississippi’s sports betting is stuck in person at casinos, trailing states with full mobile access because our legislature’s been dragging its feet for all sorts of reasons. This puts Coastal Mississippi at a real disadvantage when fighting for gambling dollars, especially with younger bettors who’d rather tap an app than pull a slot lever.
Fair warning: We’re already slipping. We need to level the playing field with rival states by implementing mobile sports betting as soon as possible. On top of that, we should be expanding the market, building bigger and better casinos, and fresh developments that give us an edge and jack up the customer experience. The big question we’ve got to answer is, “What is it going to take to hit a $2 billion market?”
Ingalls, Bollinger, and Stennis lean hard on military and NASA contracts. There’s a lesson to learn from looking at Ingalls’ employment history. It peaked at 27,280 jobs in 1977, back when Cold War cash flowed like the Mississippi River. Now? It’s down to 11,000 or so. Why? Defense budgets shrink, priorities shift, and automation kicks in. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Stennis is already at around 5,000 jobs, but it’s tied to federal whims, too. One budget cut, one canceled program, and we’re scrambling. These aren’t technically our dollars. They’re Uncle Sam’s, and he’s a moody dude, especially these days.
It took 17 years to hit our pre-Katrina peak, while regional economic development competitors doubled down on growing jobs and wages. As I keep saying, this needs to be a wake-up call that it’s time for us to dream bigger while diversifying our economy. We’ve got 27,000 projected jobs tied to gaming, 26,000 to Ingalls, 9,500 to Stennis, and 25,000 tied to military bases, making for 87,500 souls banking on two segments that could falter overnight.
But in this moment, we’re strong. Very strong. That’s why Coastal Mississippi is an economic engine for the entire state. But we’re not as resilient as we could be. How we diversify should be at the forefront of our regional economic development efforts.
So, what’s the play? We’ve got assets such as ports, airports, interstates, rail, beaches, and a skilled workforce. Let’s push manufacturing beyond ships – think high-tech, AI-driven factories and mega-sites.
The Christian Science Monitor wrote last week, “The United States is on the cusp of an automation boom in manufacturing,” spurred by tariffs and supply chain shifts. We could ride that wave, building modern plants that meld robots and workers. In partnership with state universities and one of the best community colleges in the country, we could churn out coders and tech-savvy folks, not just tradespeople for shipbuilding. “Manufacturing offers the greatest pathways for people to start in a low-skill position and work their way into skill,” a UC Berkeley professor said in the same story. That’s our shot.
This isn’t abandoning what works. Gaming and government contracts are our backbone as Ingalls and Bollinger pump millions into payroll, a ripple hitting every coastal community. But a backbone doesn’t stand tall without muscle and flexibility, so in this example, a plan B.
A collaborative Coastal Mississippi Development Alliance could pitch us as one coast, landing tech and logistics instead of just ships. We’ve got Deepwater Horizon cash left, and we need to bet it on gamechangers, not fixes. We’ve got the grit and the know-how; now it’s just time to spread our bets. If we don’t, we’re one bad roll of the dice – or one budget ax – from a fall we won’t bounce back from quickly. Katrina taught us to unite; now is the time to unite again but while raising the bar, growing jobs, growing salaries, and proving John Hairston right. He called us an “800-pound gorilla that doesn’t know it.” For the long-term health of our region, our future is worth more than a jackpot or a handshake in Washington, D.C.
A closing thought: There’s much to learn from Ingalls and Bollinger about the art of long-term planning. Consider Bollinger’s icebreaker timeline, which is a four to five-year journey to build just one ship with the first hitting the water in 2030. That’s not counting the years of dreaming, planning, designing, competing, lobbying, and testing. That’s the pace of big wins: slow, steady, and strategic. Monomaniacs on a mission. That’s how our regional competitors approach it. Coastal Mississippi’s challenge is no different.
We’re not here to chase quick fixes or lean on yesterday’s successes. Diversification is our icebreaker – breaking through the old approaches to a stronger, broader future. Let’s start now, together, with the same guts and vision that built those shipyards. The payoff won’t come tomorrow, but when it does come, it’ll be a Coastal Mississippi that’s not just surviving but thriving for every family, every dreamer, and every kid with a shot at staying home and doing something bigger. We’ll be unstoppable, and that’s a legacy worth building.
Ricky Mathews has been writing about “Where does Coastal Mississippi go from here?” If you want to read more of the series, click here. You can also catch his show every day on supertalk.fm or SuperTalk TV. The show is also available on YouTube, Facebook, or your favorite podcast platform.
