My great-grandparents are from New Albany, about 30 miles to the west of Tupelo, in Union County. I believe it's Toyota that is building a huge plant in unincorporated Union County that's expected to give a lot of new jobs to the area. I've heard the plant will be located in between New Albany and Tupelo, but slightly closer to New Albany than any other town. I can't speak for Tupelo, Pontotoc, or Oxford, not spending any significant amount of time in them, but New Albany still has a fairly vibrant population for a town of it's size. Many residents, like my great-grandmother, were born and raised there and have never lived far away from New Albany, so the aging senior population is quite large (she's almost 91 years old). Despite this, there is still a large amount of non-senior population. The town actually has a fairly decent town square, though as my grandmother and great-aunt have pointed out, it's not nearly as lively as it was when they grew up there. The two of them moved to Memphis to find jobs and eventually got married and had a life there, so I'm sure the same can be said for a lot of people of that generation that grew up in northeast Mississippi. Their brother, my great-uncle, was the only one who stayed in New Albany and he lived there his whole life.
You'll find a lot of good, honest, hard working people in this region. Probably the reason why Toyota and Nissan have both built manufacturing plants in Mississippi.