Rural Economy
Rural areas are defined in a number of ways according to the economic or social outcome of interest. Rural economic and demographic changes are closely linked; both are essential to understanding whether diverse rural areas are prospering or in distress, and how underlying factors such as education affect the well-being of rural communities. These trends vary widely across rural America.
The nonmetropolitan population grew approximately a quarter percent from mid-2020 through mid-2022, about half the national rate (0.54 percent) during 2020–22. At the county level, however, there was regional and local variation in population change across nonmetro areas. Population declined in over half of all nonmetro counties. No longer concentrated in the Great Plains and Corn Belt as in previous years, nonmetro counties with population loss during 2020–22 were found in most States, including the eastern half of the country. Population grew at rates at or above the national rate of 0.54 percent in over a third of nonmetro counties, with most growing at or above twice the national rate. Many of these counties were in recreation or retirement destinations, such as in the southern Appalachians and Ozarks, the upper Great Lakes, and throughout the intermountain West. Others are found adjacent to large metro areas, such as Nashville, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Dallas-Ft. Worth. However, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, high-growth nonmetro counties were also found in all States of the Great Plains, reversing historic trends.
For the second year following the COVID-19 pandemic, population increased in nonmetro areas, growing 0.12 percent from mid-2021 to mid-2022. Nonmetro population change had reversed in the previous year, from a 0.09-percent decline in 2019–20 to a 0.14-percent increase in the following 12 months. A turnaround in migration flows between metro and nonmetro counties occurred during the first year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic, in contrast with the previous decade that saw the first-ever loss in nonmetro population (from 2010–17) when annual population change averaged -0.08 percent per year.
Rural areas vary in the industries that underpin their economies. Counties’ employment levels are more sensitive to economic trends that strongly affect their leading industries. For example, trends in agricultural prices have a disproportionate effect on farming-dependent counties, which accounted for nearly 20 percent of all rural counties and 6 percent of the rural population in 2017. Likewise, the boom in U.S. oil and natural gas production that peaked in 2012 increased employment in many mining-dependent rural counties. Meanwhile, the decline in manufacturing employment has particularly affected manufacturing-dependent counties, which accounted for about 18 percent of rural counties and 22 percent of the rural population in 2017.