Rural Economic Performance

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has just released a new report on the performance of rural economies in recent years.

During the 1990s, the United States experienced the longest economic expansion on record. Rural areas shared in the Nation’s prosperity: earnings and incomes rose, poverty lessened, and population grew. In fact, many demographers declared it the decade of the “rural rebound.” In late summer 2000, manufacturing went into a downturn. Afterward, in March 2001, the economy slipped into recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession lasted 8 months, ending in November 2001. The U.S. economy still has some weak patches, however, making the recovery less robust than the first 2 years of a typical expansion.

Despite a continuing soft job market, rural areas fared better than urban areas in 2002, with higher job growth and lower unemployment. Employment levels rose significantly in many nonmetro counties, particularly in the Northeast and the West. Employment losses in rural areas in the South and Midwest are largely a reflection of declines in manufacturing and mining. The sharp drop in exports, induced by a very strong dollar and sluggish world growth, contributed to a sharp decline in manufacturing jobs even before the recession started. Manufacturing employment has continued to drop despite recent export increases, due to continuing productivity gains, sluggish domestic demand for manufactured goods, and increased worldwide competitiveness. The loss of manufacturing jobs has disproportionally affected rural communities, but the steep decline in manufacturing jobs seen in 2001 subsided by early 2003.

Go here to download the report.