Rural Counties Have Lost More Jobs Than Urban Counties

An article in the rural America newspaper the Daily Yonder says that four years after the beginning of the recession, job losses in rural counties are higher than those in urban or exurban counties. (Exurban counties are those beyond the suburbs of a city. They are in metropolitan regions, but about half of the people who live there are in rural settings.)

Rural counties had nearly 850,000 fewer jobs this December than in December of 2007. That’s 3.7% fewer jobs in rural America four years after the recession began.

Urban counties had lost 3.3% of their jobs four years after the recession. Exurban counties lost 2.9% of their jobs.

The county with the largest job loss was Yavapai County in Arizona. That exurban county lost around 8,800 jobs.