Rural job growth outpaces urban job growth since 2016 election; Trump earns some credit, but it's complicated

Compound annual employment growth rate by county. (Brookings Institution map)

Rural voters came out for President Trump in record numbers in 2016, partly because he promised to improve the economy. Since the election, employment in rural areas has grown faster than in big cities, according to the Brookings Institution. Rates of growth aren't the same thing as employment levels, "but assuming that overall, downtrodden rural Americans are seeing an upswing under Trump, how much credit can the president really take?" Jeff Spross writes for The Week.

The answer is complicated, Spross writes. Though Trump's environmental deregulations likely helped the mining industry, and much of the recent rural job growth is in industries like logging, mining, oil and gas, and construction, Brookings notes that such industries tend to have cyclical growth patterns. A cyclone that temporarily destroyed Australia's ability to export coal also helped.

The trade war with China has also had a complicated fallout: the tariffs on steel help steel manufacturers, but they hurt manufacturers who buy steel. And retaliatory tariffs from China and other nations on U.S. farm products were calculated to hurt rural areas, Spross writes.

The most likely explanation for why rural job growth has outpaced urban job growth is that the recovery from the Great Recession "has simply gone on long enough to reach rural America," which was slower to recover, Spross writes. "If rural America is finally getting its share of the recovery, that's certainly good news. And Trump deserves some credit. But he's also the beneficiary of good timing and circumstance."