(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Rural Employment Improves but Lags Recession-Era Jobs [1] ['Sarah Melotte', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2024-06-10 Rural America added 171,200 jobs last year but still hasn’t recovered the employment it lost during the pandemic. For that matter, it hasn’t replaced the jobs lost during the Great Recession 15 years ago. According to a Daily Yonder analysis of new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs in rural (nonmetropolitan) counties grew by about 1 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to the 2013 OMB definitions of metropolitan statistical areas. The increase in annual employment is part of a longer trend of recovery since the pandemic-related economic shutdowns in 2020. Rural counties have added jobs every year since 2020. But last year’s employment was still 106,800 jobs shy of pre-pandemic employment. And post-pandemic job growth slowed last year, compared to 2021 and ’22. Employment Gains Vary by Geography Nationwide, employment improved by 1.44% last year, adding 2.3 million jobs to the market. Growth varied by geography, with counties of larger populations gaining more jobs than less densely populated ones. This analysis is based on average annual employment numbers, which provide a way to look at longer-term changes in employment, as opposed to monthly jobs reports. Jobs grew the most in major metropolitan areas, ones with more than 1 million residents. These counties gained 1.4 million jobs, a 1.57% increase over 2022. In medium-sized metros, ones with populations of 250,0000 to under 1 million residents, jobs grew by 1.45%, a total of 462,600 new jobs. Smaller metropolitan counties with fewer than 250,000 residents gained 187,200 jobs, a 1.37% increase over 2022. Nationally, about 70% of all U.S. counties added jobs last year, but only 60% of nonmetropolitan counties saw an increase. Pandemic Employment Recovery Lags in Rural Counties The 2022 increase in jobs brought rural numbers to within 106,800 jobs of pre-pandemic employment, a 0.5% decrease since 2019. In the meantime, employment in metropolitan counties grew by about 2.1% since the pandemic. That represents an additional 2.9 million jobs since 2019. While jobs grew in metropolitan counties as a group, there was variation based on the size of metropolitan areas. In the nation’s largest cities, employment increased by 2.19%, adding 2 million jobs to their pre-pandemic employment numbers. Medium-sized metros added 735,300 jobs to their pre-pandemic employment level, meanwhile, representing a 2.32% increase over 2019. Small metros with populations of fewer than 250,000 residents added 707,300 jobs since 2006, a 1.35% increase over 2019. Rural Jobs Are Still Behind Pre-Recession Levels In the longer-term picture, rural counties still haven’t recovered the jobs they lost during the Great Recession of 2008, while metropolitan American returned to pre-recession employment more than a decade ago. This graph above shows the relative change in employment in various types of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan (rural) counties compared to annual employment in 2006, the last complete year before the recession began in 2007. If this graph looks familiar, that’s because the Daily Yonder has been tracking this trend for years. After nearly identical declines in 2009, rural and urban job performance began to follow different trajectories. Major and medium-sized metros bottomed out relatively quickly and started to bounce back in 2009. Small metros and nonmetropolitan (rural) counties didn’t hit bottom until 2010. After that, nonmetropolitan counties sputtered while the rest of the country saw much faster recovery. By 2019, the year before the pandemic, rural counties were still well below pre-recession employment, while the rest of the country had moved on, with major metropolitan counties leading the way. A less pronounced but similar trend occurred in the recovery from the pandemic. Both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties lost jobs at similar rates from 2019 to 2020. Since 2021, rural counties’ job recovery has been at a slower rate than the rest of the country. The cumulative result of the recession and the pandemic is that nonmetropolitan America had 655,700 fewer jobs in 2023 than it did in 2006 – a 3.13% drop. In metropolitan counties over the same time period, employment grew by 18 million jobs, a 15% increase. Major metropolitan counties saw the greatest percent increase in employment since the recession, adding 14 million new jobs to the market, representing an 18% increase in employment. Smaller metropolitan counties also saw improvements over 2006 employment, but not as much as the nation’s largest cities. In medium-sized metros, employment increased by 11% between 2006 and 2023. That’s equal to an additional 3.2 million jobs. In small metropolitan counties, jobs grew by 5.38%, 707,300 more jobs than the 2019 levels. To learn more about employment in your own county, use the search bar in the table below. Notes: For the sake of consistency, the Daily Yonder is continuing to use the OMB 2013 metro and nonmetro delineations, even though the updated 2023 list has been published. Using a consistent definition of rural allows us to easily track changes in rural economies over time. In the OMB system, metropolitan areas are defined county by county. The entire county is either metropolitan or it’s not, based on the size of a city in that county or commuting patterns. The OMB considers all other counties to be “nonmetropolitan.” Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/rural-employment-improves-but-lags-recession-era-jobs/2024/06/10/ Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/