"The pandemic brought jobs and people to places that had been in decline. One reason is that the pandemic brought a sharp shift in household consumption toward goods and away from services. Rural America, the manufacturing heartland, benefited from job growth in 2022 and 2023. That growth slowed by 2024, but legislation like Sen. Todd Young's CHIPS and Science Act offered at least a hint that we might be entering a period of more stable factory employment."
"Unlike most of the world, the U.S. economy boomed after COVID-19. The effects were particularly obvious in labor markets, pushing us down to the longest stretch of sub-4% unemployment since the 1960s. This attracted immigrants - legal and illegal - many of whom came to rural America for economic opportunity. This was a rare advantage for rural places with low quality of life. Economic migrants are driven more by good-paying jobs than luxuries such as walkable neighborhoods or nationally ranked schools."
COVID-19 produced an unexpected economic upswing for rural America by shifting household spending toward goods and increasing manufacturing employment. Job growth in 2022–2023 and policies like the CHIPS and Science Act offered prospects for more stable factory jobs, but growth slowed by 2024. The U.S. labor market tightened to sub-4% unemployment, attracting immigrants, both legal and undocumented, to rural areas for work. Remote-work acceleration enabled families to move to high-quality rural communities while maintaining urban jobs. New businesses expanded the supply of college-educated workers. Reversals of pandemic-era policies and slowing growth threaten these recent rural gains.
Read at USA TODAY
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