Americans who live in rural areas don’t believe good jobs are coming and they don’t want to move. We have to bring remote work to the country
For the one in five Americans who still live in rural areas, remote work isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifeline. And more and more of these would-be workers will be at risk unless we can summon the collective will to make remote job opportunities available to them.
Now here’s the good news: A majority in rural regions are ready to seize these opportunities—provided we find innovative ways to give them a chance.
That’s the upshot of fresh research that Generation, the non-profit I run, recently commissioned. We went into the field knowing that midcareer and older workers everywhere – though they are a growing portion of the labor force – are more likely to struggle with long-term unemployment. And knowing also that long-term, persistent poverty is far more prevalent in rural counties than urban counties.
To learn more about this especially challenged subset, we partnered with YouGov to survey more than 500 individuals aged 45 or older who reside in rural areas across 17 states that make up the Appalachia and Delta regions. Almost half were currently unemployed.
