Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Urban areas recover jobs lost in recession, but rural areas lag along with population

Urban areas have recovered most of the jobs lost from the 2007 recession, but more than 90 percent of the net loss of jobs are in rural areas or counties with small cities, Bill Bishop reports for the Daily Yonder. One contributing factor could be that population is declining in many non-metropolitan counties. Last year, non-metro population declined for the first time since the Census Bureau began estimating county populations.

Overall, the U.S. has 718,000 fewer jobs today than it did when the recession began, Bishop reports. Rural counties have 263,000 fewer jobs than in 2007, a decline of 3 percent, while unemployment has increased by 198,000. Counties with small cities have 388,000 fewer jobs, and the number of unemployed has increased by 314,000. Cities have 67,000 fewer jobs, but they have 3.76 million more unemployed, a 90 percent increase in unemployment. (Read more(Yonder graphic from  Bureau of Labor Statistics data)

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