Seven of fastest-growing jobs pay little, dominate rural areas; programs seek to increase high-paying rural jobs

Art Cullen

One reason rural America is poorer and losing its promising young people: "The jobs that pay the least dominate rural economies," Pulitzer Prize-winning rural editor Art Cullen writes in an editorial for The Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa.

According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of the 10 fastest-growing job segments over the next decade pay less than $33,000 a year and six pay less than $27,000 a year. Those jobs are: personal care aides, food prep and serving, home health aides, cooks, restaurant servers, janitors, and medical assistants. The three fastest-growing jobs that pay well (registered nurses, general managers, and software developers) tend to require a college degree and are much more common in urban areas, Cullen reports.

"Obvious conclusions include that to make a decent living you need a post-secondary education; and, some of the most important and literally vital jobs (home health aides) don’t pay a living wage," Cullen writes. "Teacher aides do much of the heavy lifting in schools but are paid a fraction of teachers, and have no union representation. Social workers who help disabled adults find meaning through work are paid barely more than the minimum wage."

Some programs are trying to split the difference: keep rural youth home while making it possible for them to get a degree. One such program, a partnership between Iowa Central Community College, Silicon Valley-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, and the town leaders of Jefferson, Iowa, seeks to create high-paying computer coding jobs in rural places, Cullen writes.

Buena Vista University in Storm Lake is also encouraging rural economic development with its new centers for agriculture and rural entrepreneurship. "We can rebuild rural Iowa with brains and ambition in great abundance here. Now, the political establishment is embracing the possibilities in these under-utilized and often forgotten places. The most important building block is education. Iowa is rediscovering its importance," Cullen writes.

Cullen and his family, who own and operate the paper, won the 2017 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. He won that year's Pulitzer for editorials.