Rural jobs are nearly back to pre-pandemic level; surveyed rural Americans say pandemic job losses hit them harder

Job gains and losses, January 2020 to January 2022
Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.)

"Both rural and urban America now have just about as many jobs as they did in January 2020, the month we first started hearing about Covid-19," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. "In January of this year, rural counties had about 99 percent of the jobs they had in January 2020. These places still need to add about a quarter of a million jobs to get back to pre-Covid levels, but that is a fraction of the 20 million jobs in rural America."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data, "Nearly six out of 10 counties in the U.S. – both rural and urban – had fewer jobs in January of this year compared to January 2020. A great deal of America has not gotten back to the employment levels of early 2020," Bishop reports.

Rural working-age adults report worse employment and economic impacts from the pandemic than their urban counterparts, according to a recent Agriculture Department-funded study by the Rural Population Research Network. Here are some of the highlights of the report:

• Rural residents were more likely than their urban counterparts to test positive for the coronavirus, live with someone who tested positive, or have close friends or family members outside the household test positive.
• Rural residents are more likely to have a close family member hospitalized for Covid-19 and more likely to have someone in their household quarantine due to exposure.
"Rural working-age adults were more likely to report experiencing several adverse employment and financial impacts than their urban peers. Rural residents were more likely to report that, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, they lost their job (urban=34.3%; rural=39.3%), were considered an essential worker (55.7%; 59.9%), worked fewer hours than normal (48.6%; 54.1%), were late paying their rent or mortgage (14.8%; 18.5%), were late paying other bills (22%; 28%), could not afford groceries or other necessities (17.3%; 22.9%), and that they got a loan from a friend or family member (11.7%; 14.8%)."

Effects of the pandemic on rural and urban respondents. Click the image to enlarge it.
(Rural Population Research Network chart)