Low-Skill Employment and the Changing Economy of Rural America

by Robert Gibbs, Lorin Kusmin, and John Cromartie

This study reports trends in rural low-skill employment in the 1990s and their impact on the rural workforce. The share of rural jobs classified as low-skill fell by 2.2 percentage points between 1990 and 2000, twice the decline of the urban low-skill employment share, but much less than the decline of the 1980s. Employment shifts from low-skill to skilled occupations within industries, rather than changes in industry mix, explain virtually all of the decline in the rural low-skill employment share. The share decline was particularly large for rural Black women, many of whom moved out of low-skill blue-collar work into service occupations, while the share of rural Hispanics who held low-skill jobs increased.

Keywords: rural labor markets, low-skill employment, job skills, human capital, industry, occupation, economic development

In this publication...

• Entire Report
• Abstract, Acknowledgments, Contents, and Summary
• Introduction
• Data and Methods
• Rural America and the Prevalence of Low-Skill Employment
• Rural Low-Skill Employment Declines Outpace the Nation?s
• Structural Factors Driving Rural Low-Skill Employment Trends in the 1990s
• How Rural Low-Skill Change in the 1990s Compares with the 1980s
• Implications of Low-Skill Employment Trends for Rural Workers
• Conclusions
• References
• Appendix
• Report summary