Rural employment dropped 6.4% from July 2019-2020; see county-level data

County-level change in jobs from July 2019-July 2020. Daily Yonder map;
click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Jobs in nonmetropolitan counties fell by 6.4 percent from July 2019 to July 2020, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means that "about 1.3 million rural Americans who had jobs in July 2019 were unemployed one year later," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. "Nine out of 10 rural counties lost jobs in the last year."

Meanwhile, those living in the nation's largest cities saw a decline of 10.1% over the same period, a drop of 4.5 million jobs. The nationwide average in that time period was 8.5%, or 10.3 million jobs, Bishop reports.