Coronavirus (COVID-19) Job Losses Hit Rural Areas Still Recovering From Great Recession

By 2019, total employment in rural America had not yet recovered from jobs lost during and after the Great Recession (2007–2009), and according to a recently published USDA, Economic Research Service analysis, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to further job losses in 2020. Annual average employment levels in 2019 were only 97 percent of their pre-Great Recession levels in rural counties, while employment levels in urban counties had reached 111 percent of 2007 levels by 2019. The drop in rural employment from 2007 to 2019 partially coincided with an unprecedented period of rural population loss from 2010 to 2016 and an aging overall population