Rural counties lost many jobs in Mar.; see county-level data

Job changes, Feb. to March 2020. Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version

Rural counties lost about 300,000 jobs from February to March, according to an analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the first solid measure of the pandemic's effect on jobs.

"Rural employment declined from 20.3 million jobs in February to about 20 million in March, a 1.2 percent drop in employment, Bill Bishop and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. Employment dropped 1.9% in metropolitan counties, a loss of 2.6 million jobs. About three-quarters of those losses came from cities with more than 1 million residents. Nationwide, employment dropped 1.8%.

Jobs grew in 20 percent of rural counties gained jobs in March, but that was true in only 6.5% of urban counties. "Rural counties were much slower to add jobs following the 2008 Great Recession. Now rural counties seem to be slower losing jobs in response to the pandemic, at least for now," Bishop and Marema report. They note that the social distancing and lockdowns that caused the job losses didn't really start until halfway into March.