During the 1990s, the U.S. experienced the longest economic expansion
on record, with higher earnings and less poverty. Rural areas shared
in the Nation’s prosperity, leading demographers to declare
it the decade of the “rural rebound.” However, manufacturing
went into a downturn in late summer 2000, and in March 2001, the
economy slipped into an 8-month recession. Despite a continuing
soft job market, rural areas fared better than urban areas in 2002,
with higher job growth and lower unemployment. An analysis of ongoing
changes in rural areas helps in assessing strategies to enhance
economic opportunity
and quality of life for rural Americans.
Overall effects of the 2001 recession on rural areas were mild
compared with earlier recessions. Nonmetro employment stayed about
level from 2001 to 2002, while metro employment fell. However,
the effects were not uniform. Employment levels rose significantly
in many nonmetro counties, particularly in the Northeast and the
West, while falling in others. Employment losses in rural areas
in the South and Midwest were largely a reflection of declines
in manufacturing and mining. Average weekly earnings for nonmetro
workers were $543 in 2002, about 80 percent of the $685 metro average.
Nonmetro earnings, however, increased 1.4 percent during 2001-02,
compared with 0.9 percent for metro earnings.
The sharp drop in exports in 2000, 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, disproportionally
affecting rural communities. The steep decline in manufacturing
jobs seen in 2001 had subsided by early 2003, with job decline
at 4 percent in early 2003. Still, from the onset of the manufacturing
downturn in August 2000, the share of manufacturing jobs lost was
higher in nonmetro areas (19 percent) than in metro areas (14 percent).
Recently released 2001-02 population estimates show a leveling
of the “rural rebound,” a period in the 1990s when
population in most nonmetro counties grew much faster or declined
more slowly than in the 1980s. Rural population growth has slowed
since the mid-1990s, with a number of
counties reverting to population loss. The South accounted for more than half
of nonmetro population gains during 2001-02.
Population growth in the nonmetro West was nearly twice the rate of the rest
of rural America.
Download PDF version