Rural America's post-pandemic recovery continues to lag behind the rest of the nation. "Last week's monthly job report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was better than expected, but another recent report from the bureau shows rural America still has a way to go to get back to pre-pandemic employment levels," reports Tim Marema of The Daily Yonder. "In April, the bureau released its annual average employment report for 2022. As the name implies, this report takes job data for the entire year. It produces a single average employment number for each county in the U.S. This data provides a longer-term view than monthly reports of how the American economy is performing for working people."

Rural America lost 953,000 jobs in the first year of the pandemic and has added less than 738,000 jobs in the last two years, Marema reports: "In 2022, there were 1.1% fewer jobs in rural counties than in 2019. Metropolitan counties had, on average, about 1% more jobs last year than before the pandemic. . . . The most recent county-level monthly job reinforces the prospects of slow job recovery in rural counties. Rural counties added about 85,000 jobs in February 2023 compared to the previous February, a gain of 0.4%."

Read the full article about rural employment by Heather Close at The Rural Blog.