
By nature, urban areas have faster rates of job growth than rural ones. But certain rural places have actually seen rates of job growth similar to counties in medium-size and smaller metros, reports CityLab's Richard Florida.
Across the nation, the median job growth rate for all counties over the past decade and a half was 2.1 percent. Large urban counties saw a 12 percent rate of job growth, and both small and medium-size urban counties saw a 6 percent rate of growth. Most types of rural counties experienced negative job growth, with only large rural counties posting a positive rate: The rate of job growth in large rural counties outside of metro areas was slightly better than 4 percent, not too far off the rate of job growth for small and medium-size urban counties.
But, interestingly enough, small rural counties that are not adjacent to metros have the second largest share. Indeed, every type of rural place has some share of job winners.
One Nevada county is a prime example of how the economic boom is not exclusive to large urban counties. Storey County, about an hour outside of Reno, tops the list of all counties in terms of overall job change from 2001 to 2016. The medium-size urban metro saw a job growth of nearly 590 percent, potentially due to Tesla opening its massive lithium-ion Gigafactory in mid-2016. The following top nine counties are mostly in the Midwest or South, in places like the Dakotas, Iowa, and Louisiana. Love County, Oklahoma, is number six with 211 percent growth, perhaps attributable to the 2013 expansion of the Winstar World Casino, the county’s largest private employer. Sumter County, Florida, ranks number 7 with 210 percent growth, possibly due to one of Florida’s largest retirement communities, The Villages, expanding in 2017.
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