Recession has hurt rural manufacturing counties harder than population-losing farm counties

The nation's economic crisis has had a dramatic impact on rural communities, but more so on manufacturing communities than hose where farming is the dominant economic activity. "Out-migration, education, and long-term poverty may account for these differences," Bo Beaulieu and Roberto Gallardo of the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University write for the Daily Yonder. "These socioeconomic features may underlie the different employment outcomes in farming and manufacturing communities."

Beaulieu and Gallardo determined that there were 146 nonmetro counties with unemployment above 15 percent and 823 nonmetro counties below the national average of 7.8 percent. "Nearly 47 percent of the high-unemployment nonmetro counties are classified as manufacturing- dependent counties, while only a handful are dominated by farming (6.2 percent)," they write. "On the other hand, the largest share of low-unemployment counties is farm-dependent (36.2 percent), with only 11.2 percent being defined as manufacturing-dependent counties."

When trying to determine why farming communities have managed to avoid the high unemployment rates found in manufacturing counties it was determined that two-thirds of farm-dependent counties had lost population. "The lower unemployment rates uncovered in many farm-dependent nonmetro counties are masking some broader economic challenges facing these communities," add Beaulieu and Gallardo. "Simply put, lots of these farm dependent counties have witnessed the outmigration of many workers and families in past years, many of their residents moving on, in search of better economic opportunities." (Read more)