Currently, 17 percent of the population of the United States (50 million people) and 75 percent of the land area are nonmetropolitan. These vast areas face a variety of unique challenges and are subject to numerous misconceptions. Over the past 50 years, most people viewed rural America in simple terms: it was the agriculture and natural resource heartland. That perception is no longer valid, but federal policy has not kept up with the change and the drive to create new resources and jobs in rural America.

Although farming remains important in hundreds of rural counties, nonmetropolitan America is now extremely diverse, with a population, labor force, and  economy that encompasses far more than agriculture. The proportion of the rural labor force employed by manufacturing in 2003 was 12.4 percent, substantially higher than the 8.4 percent figure in metropolitan areas. The roster of rural industries ranges from clothing manufacturers to auto parts makers to manufacturers of computer equipment.
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Many manufacturing counties enjoyed significant population and migration gains in the 1990s after little growth in the 1980s. However, the recent globalization of manufacturing has cost many rural manufacturing jobs. The low-technology, low-wage manufacturing that rural manufacturing plants specialized in is now shifting offshore. The impact of those trends is clearly reflected in the dramatically reduced levels of population growth and modest net migration gains in manufacturing counties since 2000.

Poverty exists across the United States; however, the geography of poverty in rural America is unique. Of all counties with poverty rates higher than the national rate, nearly 84 percent are nonmetropolitan. All but 11 of the 200 poorest counties in the United States are nonmetropolitan, and more than 81 nonmetropolitan counties have poverty rates above 30 percent, including 12 with rates above 40 percent.

This is an excerpt from The NEXT American Opportunity. The full text can be downloaded as an Adobe PDF Document.