Rural Jobs Feel Pain of Globalization

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, rural areas are experiencing major business and job losses, and these losses are linked to the globalization of industry.

Rural factories across the nation cut 4.6 percent of their payrolls last year and about 140 plants closed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 500,000 jobs were lost in February and March alone.

"Rural areas have typically offered an energetic work force, an inexpensive work force, inexpensive land and in many cases inexpensive taxes. That formula is increasingly called into question in a globalizing economy where there are locations that have even more inexpensive land and labor," said Mark Drabenstott, an economist with the Fed.

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