In the long recovery from the recession of 2008-09, one big thing is missing in rural and small-town America: new businesses. “Rural areas have seen their business formation fall off a cliff,” says the Washington Post, citing a net loss of businesses in nearly two of every three rural counties from 2010-14, a much worse situation than what happened in the wake of previous recessions.
“The counties shedding establishments span the country and include almost every variety of rural areas, from farming and manufacturing communities in Missouri to coal-reliant swatches of Appalachia to coastal counties in the Pacific Northwest where the timber and fishing industries have dwindled,” said the Post. Based on a report from the bipartisan Economic Innovation Group, the newspaper said the slump in business creation “jeopardizes the economic future of vast swaths of the country.”
“Economists say the divergence appears to reflect a combination of trends, all of which have harmed small businesses in rural America,” said the Post. “Those include the rise of big-box retailers such as Walmart, the loss of millions of manufacturing and construction jobs across the country and a pullback in business lending that appears to have stung small-town and rural borrowers particularly hard.”