Most rural counties gained jobs over the past year, but job growth rate lags metros; map has county-level data

Employment change by county from November 2018 to November 2019
(Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here to see the interactive version)

Two-thirds of rural counties gained jobs between November 2018 and November 2019, but rural job growth continued to trail metropolitan job growth, according to the newest data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data also conformed with a well-known trend: the more urban the county, the higher the job growth rate, and vice versa. The biggest cities had the highest job growth rate, while the most rural areas had the lowest.

"Almost twice as many rural counties proportionately lost jobs in the last year compared to metro job-losers. Nineteen percent of metro counties had fewer jobs at the end of the year than at the beginning. Among rural counties, 37 percent had lost jobs," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. "Job growth was an almost entirely urban phenomenon. The top 319 counties in total job growth were all in metro areas."