Rural Workers at a Disadvantage in Job Opportunities

Population sparsity and small community size make rural areas more suited to production jobs than to management or research jobs. The greater vulnerability of production jobs to business cycles, foreign competition, and technological displacement places rural workers at a longrun disadvantage. The rural disadvantage is due more to the types of jobs available in rural areas than to the low education levels of rural workers. Current low earnings for rural workers with more than a high school education appear to be inducing many of them to move to the city