Fishing to Catch People Part 1: Casting a Line
The new play for rural communities may be “fishing” for people, not companies. And the pandemic is showing them how. (Photo from Take Me Fishing)
Note: A companion version of this article appears on wral.com as “Remote Work Could Jumpstart a Renaissance for Rural Communities” here.
I could see how excited Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi was as he addressed the meeting of the Southern Growth Policies Board in Jackson in 2010: “I’ve just gotten back from a fishing trip, and I think they were biting!”
The “fishing” was in Chicago, where Barbour had been meeting with Mississippi transplants who were now living “away,” making his best pitch to convince them to move back home. It was one of those ideas that made a lot of sense. Former residents already knew the state. They might be open to moving back. If they did, they would likely bring with them higher education levels; they might even bring other jobs with them.
Surveys consistently show more people would like to live in rural areas than actually live there. Gallup polling over 20 years, most recently in 2018 shows, shows that given six choices of where they would like to live, the largest percentage of Americans would choose rural.
If more Americans want to live rural why don’t they? It’s mostly a jobs problem.
But the fish haven’t been biting: when push came to shove Barbour’s pleas didn’t work. More recently, efforts to pay city dwellers up to $15,000 to move to local areas have struggled too. The biggest barrier: there just aren’t enough good jobs located physically in rural America.
A pair of researchers from Ohio University’s Center for Economic Development and Community Resilience, Dr. Jason Jolley and Brent Lane, say it is time for that to change. They argue that the pandemic revealed a new opportunity for rural America to overcome the jobs problem and potentially make an impressive comeback. The secret? Not recruiting gigantic new companies, but taking advantage of the newly-expanded world of remote and hybrid work.
As I’ve written about previously, the pandemic demonstrated to companies and workers that employees don’t have to be in the office every day, and, in some jobs, don’t need to be in the office at all. Right now, folks are working remotely 27.8% of their days – about four times as much as they were pre-pandemic - and more jobs than ever are fully remote.
I talked this week to Lane, the Executive in Residence for Economic Strategies at Ohio University. He says the new reality of work creates two different opportunities for rural communities:
· More opportunities to welcome people with fully-remote jobs: Current rural residents, and people hoping to move to rural areas, have the ability to compete for an expanding pie of fully-remote jobs: currently 1 in 8 jobs (12.7%) is fully-remote. For those jobs, it matters what you know and can do, not where you live; if you can do the job and have high speed Internet, you can live anywhere. “100% remote work means the world is your labor shed,” says Lane. “You can work anywhere.” A 2023 Fannie Mae survey confirms this: workers of all ages and income levels are more willing than ever to live further from their company’s “central” office.
· More people living there who have hybrid jobs: Currently 28.2% of jobs are “hybrid,” meaning workers don’t have to be in a central office every day. That opens up a much bigger number of jobs for rural residents and those considering moving back: “Right now we only officially count job (opportunities) that are within a 30-minute commuting distance,” says Lane. “You’ll drive further if you don’t have to do it everyday.”
If you can work from anywhere, why wouldn’t you live where you want to live? (Photo Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash)
The explosion of remote/hybrid work can be a game-changer for people, towns and companies:
Benefits to existing rural residents: More job opportunities means potentially higher wages and the potential for young people to stay rural. “It’s the prime working age population that’s leaving (rural places),” says Lane. “That’s the life of your community – the group that buys the homes, starts the families, joins the civic clubs. You need to show them there’s a reason to stay.”
Benefits to returning residents: Lane is skeptical of programs bribing strangers to move to rural areas, but he is convinced that people who grew up in rural places would come back if they could solve the work problem: “We know some fresh water species and even some ocean species of fish go away, but they have something drawing them to return to their home.” With technology permitting more remote work, former residents might appreciate lower housing prices, familiar surroundings and a different quality of life.
Benefits to rural communities: Greater job opportunity not only helps retain young people, existing workers and potential new residents: it enhances local spending; strengthens the local tax base; increases workforce participation – all enhancing civic pride.
Benefits to companies: Remote/hybrid worker availability expands the number of workers that companies – both outside rural America and in rural America -- can draw on. They can find the best workers, regardless of location.
What do rural communities need to do to take advantage of this new opportunity?
1. Check readiness: Jolley and Lane have developed a “scorecard” enabling places to assess their readiness to attract and retain remote/hybrid workers. At a minimum, communities need to make sure that they have high-speed Internet in place, high quality housing available and people who can provide high-quality childcare.
2. Finetune skills: To compete for jobs nationally, rural residents need access to both occupational skills – job specific training and retraining -- and remote working digital skills – supervisors say they look to remote workers to communicate clearly, work fluently on digital platforms and exhibit strong ability to work independently, self-motivate and manage their time.
The musical highlights some of the joys of living in a small community. Post-pandemic, those joys are available to more people.
There’s a great southern musical called King Mackeral and the Blues are Running that tells the tale of a group of musicians that get together to try to save a rural community. The title reminds us that the best time to go fishing is when you’ve got the best chance to catch something, when the fish are “running.” For rural areas, that time is now. “We need to do this sooner, not later; now, not ‘when we get around to it,’” Lane says. “Because every new year we wait, we lose another graduating class that moves away because there is no opportunity…. I’m not usually advocational when it comes to public policy, but on this one I have to be. There’s not much good news for rural America these days. But any town can do this.”
Notes:
Gallup polling on living preferences: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-living-country.aspx#:~:text=Americans%20under%20age%2030%20are,a%20small%20city%20(16%25).
Rural communities paying folks to move there: https://www.newsweek.com/map-cities-states-pay-move-there-1877385#:~:text=Ascend%20West%20Virginia%2C%20a%20public,Elkins%20and%20the%20eastern%20panhandle.
Ohio University report on potential impact of remote work on rural employment: https://www.ohio.edu/voinovich-school/sites/ohio.edu.voinovich-school/files/sites/Remote%20Working%20presentation%20Sept%2016%202022.pdf
Change in work from home rates pre and post-pandemic: https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/WFHResearch_updates_March2024.pdf
Fannie Mae survey on willingness to relocate to places with longer commutes: https://www.fanniemae.com/media/48891/display
Remote workers more likely to have higher education levels: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/08/business/economy/remote-work-home.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cbt