Rural Employment in Four States: A Story of Specialization and Change

Rural Employment in Four States: A Story of Specialization and Change (2010 through 2019) By Matt Klesta, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland | May 27, 2021 The views expressed in this report are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. [...] 33 CZs in the Fourth District, only those in which at least 40 percent of the population is nonmetropolitan were used, To understand why total employment is growing more and these CZs are aggregated based on the change in total slowly in nonmetropolitan Fourth District counties than in employment from 2010 through 2019. [...] First, in the nonmetropolitan portions of the (and why the OH–Gain region is doing better), it is helpful to Fourth District, two employment sectors tend to dominate: take a closer look at the second factor that helps explain the manufacturing and natural resources and mining. [...] Next, the table shows that industry specialization by comparing the share of an industry regions with growth in total employment tended to see their in one region against the share of the same industry in a levels of specialization increase rather than their economies larger geographic area, usually the United States. [...] specialization in each of the four regions under examination Table 1: Location Quotients (2010 and 2019) Source: Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (Bureau of Labor Statistics) 4 2010 = 100 The final factor that helps explain the trends in total Figure 4: Manufacturing employment requires a closer look at the two primary employment sectors in each of the CZs in the four 20% regions: manufact.