Rural Economy

Historically, nonmetro areas in the United States have lagged behind metro areas in educational attainment, but nonmetro educational attainment levels continue to increase. From 2000 to 2017–21, the share of adults with less than a high school diploma declined in nonmetro areas from 24 percent to 13 percent and the share of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher increased from 15 percent to 21 percent. However, the share of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher in metro areas increased from 26 percent in 2000 to 36 percent in 2017–21, widening the nonmetro-metro gap from 11 percentage points to 15 percentage points. One explanation for the persisting and widening gap may be the higher pay more highly-educated workers can often earn in metropolitan labor markets.

Nonmetro areas have had a higher rate of poverty than metro areas since the 1960s (when poverty rates were first officially recorded). Over time, however, the difference between nonmetro and metro poverty rates has generally narrowed, falling from an average difference of 4.5 percentage points in the 1980s to an average gap of about 3.1 percentage points in 2010–21. In 2022, the nonmetro poverty rate was 15.5 percent, while the metro rate was 12.1 percent.

After a decade of population loss in the 2010s, the population in nonmetropolitan (rural) areas has increased each year since 2020. The growth is from migration, which has offset the population loss in nonmetro areas, caused by natural change (birth and death). Falling birth rates and an aging population have steadily slowed population growth in nonmetro counties over time. Each year since 2017, nonmetro areas have recorded more deaths than births. In the 2010s, nonmetro counties also experienced more out-migration than in-migration, further contributing to population loss. The migration pattern changed in 2020. Between 2020 and 2021, nonmetro counties experienced domestic migration gains (migration from within the United States). Since 2021, migration gains to nonmetro counties have continued; however, the gains have increasingly been because of a mix of domestic and international migration. Between 2023 and 2024, almost half of net migration gains in nonmetro counties were because of international migration.

The U.S. nonmetropolitan (rural) population grew almost 1 percent from mid-2020 through mid-2024, less than half the national rate (2.6 percent) during 2020–24. At the county level, however, there were regional and local variations in the population change across nonmetro areas. The population declined in more than half (51 percent) of all nonmetro counties. No longer concentrated in the Great Plains and Corn Belt as in previous years, nonmetro counties with a population loss during 2020–24 were found in most States, including the eastern half of the country. The population grew at rates at or above the national rate of 2.6 percent in about one-fifth of nonmetro counties, with several growing at or above twice the national rate. Many of these counties were in recreation or retirement destinations—such as in the Ozarks, the upper Great Lakes, and throughout the intermountain West (and especially in Idaho, Utah, western Montana, and Washington State). Other fast growing nonmetro counties were adjacent to large metro areas—such as Nashville, Atlanta, and Dallas-Fort. Worth.

One definition of rural, based on relatively small geographic units, is provided by the U.S. Census Bureau in its urban-rural classification system. In this delineation, rural areas comprise open country and settlements with fewer than 5,000 residents and fewer than 2,000 housing units. Urban areas comprise larger places and the densely settled areas around them, but do not necessarily follow municipal boundaries. Urban areas are essentially densely settled territory as it might appear from the air.

The Economic Research Service and others who analyze conditions in "rural" America most often study conditions in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) areas, which are defined by the Office of Management and Budget on the basis of counties. Nonmetro counties include some combination of open countryside, rural towns (places with fewer than 5,000 people), and urban areas (with populations ranging from 5,000 to 49,999) that are not part of larger labor market areas (metropolitan areas). The 1,958 counties currently classified as nonmetro include 14 percent of the U.S. population (just over 46 million people) and 72 percent of the Nation's land area.

Rural areas vary in the industries that underpin their economies. Counties’ employment levels are more sensitive to economic trends that strongly affect their leading industries. For example, trends in agricultural prices have a disproportionate effect on farming-dependent counties, which accounted for nearly 20 percent of all rural counties and 6 percent of the rural population in 2017. Likewise, the boom in U.S. oil and natural gas production that peaked in 2012 increased employment in many mining-dependent rural counties. Meanwhile, the decline in manufacturing employment has particularly affected manufacturing-dependent counties, which accounted for about 18 percent of rural counties and 22 percent of the rural population in 2017.