Be careful with Hyphens

Here is a sentence that appeared in Jerry Underwood's financial column in The Birmingham News recently:

For Compass, the cuts in Birmingham come after a decades-long growth trajectory that made it one of the Birmingham-area's top employers with 3,000 workers.

A good "hyphen rule of thumb" is that two descriptive words put together to create an adjective should be hyphenated. Therefore, decades-long is correct because it becomes one adjective that describes "growth trajectory."

However, Birmingham-area's is incorrect because "Birmingham" describes "area," which is a noun (top employers of the Birmingham area).

The sentence should read as follows:

For Compass, the cuts in Birmingham come after a decades-long growth trajectory that made it one of the Birmingham area's top employers, with 3,000 workers.