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[Agriculture Fact Book 98]
Nonmetro areas gained jobs at a rate comparable to that of metro areas during the 1970's, but fell far behind metro growth during the 1980's. Nonmetro areas suffered more in the two recessions of the early 1980's and benefited less from the 1982-89 recovery than did metro areas. As a result, employment growth was considerably slower in nonmetro (1.3 percent annually) than in metro areas (2.5 percent annually) during 1979-89. More encouraging is the most recent performance of rural areas. In contrast to the 1980's trend, rural areas weathered the 1990-91 recession better than metro areas did. In nonmetro areas, total jobs grew at a 1.6 percent annual rate during 1989-95; in metro areas, jobs grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate. Most of the nonmetro growth was in services-producing industries (1.8 million out of 2.4 million new jobs). Goods- producing industries contributed 312,000 new nonmetro jobs while 616,000 goods-producing jobs were lost by metro areas.
The number of rural services-producing jobs grew faster during the 1970's (3 percent annually) than during the 1980's (2.1 percent annually) and the early 1990's (2.4 percent annually). Among the services-producing industries, general services--such as hotel accommodations, hair cuts, car repair, and entertainment--provided the largest number of new rural jobs (1 million) during 1989-95. Nonmetro retail trade firms added 621,000 new jobs, growing slightly faster (2.5 percent annually) than they had grown in the two previous decades (2.4 percent annually in the 1970's; 1.9 percent annually in the 1980's). In manufacturing, the largest goods-producing industry, nonmetro areas added jobs during 1989-95 while metro areas continued to lose jobs.
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1998 Factbook Table of Contents Publications
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