What does USDA’s latest edition of its annual “Rural America at a Glance” report indicate regarding population, demographic, and economic trends in rural areas? Rod Bain looks at some of the findings in this edition of “Agriculture USA.”
PARTICIPANTS: Rod Bain and Tracey Farrigan of the Economic Research Service
Transcript
It is an annual Agriculture Department report focused on various population and economic trends within our nation's rural areas.
The purpose for it is provide a high level discussion of different topics of interest to policy makers and the general public in terms of the things that are going on in rural America.
I'm Rod Bain.
Tracy Farragut of the Economic Research Service joins us as we look at recent trends presented within the latest edition of Rural America at a Glance in this edition of Agriculture USA.
Every year, USDA's Economic Research Service publishes a report encapsulating various trends in rural America.
Rural America at a Glance is released annually.
It provides a summary of rural demographic and economic trends with additional topics each year that highlight opportunities and challenges facing rural America.
So this year's edition really hones in on the age structure of the rural population and implications of age-related demographic change.
Tracy Farragut of USDA ERS is one of the authors of the latest edition of Rural America at a Glance, covering some of the population and economic trends from 2023.
Among the highlights from this year's report, reflection of a trend following the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued growth of rural populations since that 2020 global outbreak.
We found that the rural population continues to grow with a moderate increase over the last year.
It's largely due to more people moving into rural areas than moving out, which is a trend that we saw definitely with the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet the net increase by age reflects significant decreases in working age populations and significant rises in older populations in rural America over the past decade.
We found that over the long-term from 2010 to 2023, the number of working age people ages 15 to 64 decreased by 2 million, whereas the number of people ages 65 or older increased by 2.3 million.
So in other words, the rural population growth over the last decade plus has been characterized by growth within the older population, which is largely tied to the aging of the baby boomer cohort past the age of 65, beginning in 2011.
Despite the trend of a lower working age population, rural employment numbers from 2022 to 2023 grew to nearly pre-pandemic numbers from 2019.
Something that we saw last year as well, and that continued again over this past year, increasing again, moderately, 0.9 percent from 2022 to 2023.
It was accompanied by record low unemployment rates, which were about 4 percent in 2023.
A closer look at the rural labor force over time indicates.
Overall, the rural labor force participation rate has been relatively flat in recent years.
I have about the same amount of people in terms of percentage-wise who are participating in the labor market, but we've had increases in working age, but more so in late career and retirement age workers.
For instance, the rural persons ages 55 or older were more likely to be employed or looking for employment in 2023 than those same age groups were in maybe say around 2015.
The older age groups are tending to stay active in the rural labor market longer than they have for similar cohorts in the past. 14 percent of the total rural population in 2023 were working poor.
Which is comprised of persons 16 years of age or older who spent at least 27 weeks out of the year in the labor force.
They worked full-time or they worked part-time or they were looking for work, but their incomes fell below the official poverty level.
Continuing trends of rural part-time workers experiencing higher working poor rates compared to other workforce demographics.
Non-economic factors were the primary reasons that they provided for working part-time.
And this was across all age groups, rural or urban, such as childcare problems or other family or personal obligations rather than economic factors, which is what we may tend to lean towards when we think about this, such as rural business conditions.
One notable focus regarding rural children is poverty rates.
For children under five years old, we found that they have the highest poverty rates under the age of five than any other age group in both rural and urban areas.
And about one out of every five among this youngest rural cohort was poor in 2023 compared to about one in 10 of the oldest rural cohort, which is ages 75 or older.
With a correlation to young parents and challenges with employment.
But also in rural areas, there tends to be fewer opportunities for employment and for services that support labor force participation, such as childcare, than in urban areas.
The complete edition of the latest Rural America at a Glance can be found online at www.ers.usda.gov.
This has been Agriculture USA.
I'm Rod Bain reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.
