LESLIE BONEY: Remote work could jumpstart a renaissance for rural communities

EDITOR'S NOTE: After a career as a reporter, government worker and university administrator, Leslie Boney runs the website boneconnector.com.

Analysts and writers have been chronicling how the transition to more remote work is changing – often in negative ways -- corporate culture, viability of downtown urban core businesses or vacancy rates in office buildings.

But maybe the skyscrapers, office towers and commerce intersections are blinding us from more positive potential beyond the downtowns and crowded suburbs? I think so and I should know: I’m one of those writers.

Remote work may become an asset in struggling rural areas and their small towns.

Two researchers from North Carolina, Brent Lane and Jason Jolley now working for Ohio University, believe this could be one of the best opportunities for rural America in years, if rural leaders choose to take advantage of it.

The challenges in rural America -- and rural North Carolina is no exception – can be seen in the last census: nearly half of the state’s 100 counties – all rural -- lost population. The biggest problem is jobs: people can’t figure out how to make a living there. “People don’t live where they want to live,” says Lane, Executive in Residence for Economic Strategies at Ohio University.  Nearly twice as many Americans would prefer to live in rural areas as currently live there he says studies show. “They live where they have to live.”

The pandemic proved you don’t have to live where you work. These days, we’re working nearly four times as many days as we used to from home and 12.7% of jobs are fully remote. “100% remote work means… you can work anywhere,” says Lane. Put another way, post-pandemic, people living in rural places can compete for one of every eight jobs.

“Hybrid” jobs – where people work from home part of the time and in the office part time – now make up 28.2% of all jobs. That creates even more opportunities for rural communities, Lane notes. Research shows people are much more willing to do a long commute if they only have to do it 1-2 times a week. That’s another opportunity for rural communities to hold on to their existing population, and maybe even recruit back some folks who have moved away (Lane is not a supporter of the growing effort to lure strangers to rural communities with monetary incentives, finding those programs are not cost-effective).

There are other new opportunities for rural places to attract jobs post-pandemic. The pandemic disrupted supply chains, and made more US companies speed up “reshoring,” looking to replace some international suppliers with businesses closer to home – rural locations might offer cost advantages. And the pandemic appears to have super-charged entrepreneurship: business starts are up 59% over 2019 levels. Rural communities might try to compete to get with cities to get more of those new supply companies or startups.

Lane supports those efforts, but thinks the easiest move for rural places is to promote their other new competitive advantage: folks can live there, have a great life and still have a rich array of work opportunities – regionally or globally. That pitch may make it easier to hold on to young people just emerging from school or young families that moved away. “It’s the prime working age population that’s leaving (rural places),” he says, and those are the people any place needs to hold on to. “That’s the life of your community – the group that buys the homes, starts the families, joins the civic clubs. You need to show them there’s a reason to stay.”

Lane and Jolley have created a “scorecard” for small towns to use as they try to determine if they are ready to become remote/hybrid job hubs. At the top of the list is high speed Internet – you can’t work from home without it. But communities also need to make sure they have things like available housing for returning residents, childcare for folks working from home, and other key assets in place. Potential remote workers may need tools to identify distant jobs or short-term coaching on the nuances of working from home.

The opportunity is great, but so far Lane’s ideas aren’t sparking action in many rural communities. That needs to change. “We need to do this sooner, not later; now, not ‘when we get around to it,’” he says. “Because every new year we wait, we lose another graduating class that doesn’t feel like they can stay because there is no opportunity.”

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