In rural America, “two-thirds of counties had fewer jobs in October than in 2007,” says the Daily Yonder after examining data from the U.S. Labor Department. “Ten years after the beginning of the great economic recession in December 2007, rural America still hasn’t recovered,” with 770,000 fewer jobs than a decade ago.
Cities have fared better — only 40 percent of urban counties have fewer jobs than before the recession, says the Yonder. Major metropolitan areas have seen the largest growth. Some 7.8 million of the country’s 9 million additional jobs are in urban areas with 1 million or more residents. By contrast, Pike County, in Kentucky’s coal country, has lost more than 5,000 jobs since 2007, and New York’s Chautauqua County has lost more than 11,600 jobs during that time.
“Rural unemployment rates have dropped, however, not because there are more jobs, but because the total workforce has shrunk,” said the Yonder. “Since 2007, the total number of people working or looking for a job in rural counties has dropped by nearly 1.1 million people.”