Rural workers in jobs with low skill requirements declined as
a share of all rural workers during the 1990s, a decade when technological
change seemed to favor high-skill urban-oriented economic activities.
The share of workers in low-skill jobs declined more in rural areas
(2.2 percentage points) than in cities and suburbs (1.1 percentage
point) in the 1990s. This trend suggests that rural workers as
a whole are participating in the long-term national movement toward
a more skill-intensive economy marked by higher labor productivity
and wages. The low-skill workforce includes a majority of the rural
working poor and near-poor population, who are the focus of recent
Federal policy initiatives designed to ensure a sustainable wage.
By 2000, 42 percent of rural Americas 25 million workers
were employed in jobs with low skill requirements (6 percentage
points above the national average).
According to ERS research, the
declining share of rural workers in low-skill jobs resulted from
a shift in industrial employment
from the goods-producing sector to the service sector. Mining
and manufacturing, major forces in the goods sector, have historically
required a large number of workers with limited skills, but now
employ a much smaller proportion of the rural workforce than
in
previous decades. On the other hand, service employment, with
typically higher verbal and quantitative skill requirements, grew
rapidly.
A shift within the service sector toward less-skilled jobs,
however, offset the drop in goods-producing employment. Most
of the recent decline in the low-skill share of rural employment
is
attributable to occupational shifts within industries,
with the most pronounced shift in the goods sector. These shifts
reflect
a growing demand for workers engaged in high-skill activities,
such as administration and research associated with corporate
headquarters. Moreover, technological advances in the way that
goods and services
are produced favor workers who can perform more complex tasks
and are more proficient in verbal and quantitative skills.
Other
recent evidence corroborates the picture of skill upgrading
in rural America. ERS research on rural and urban differences in
computer use and the
adoption of advanced production technologies in manufacturing
has found that technological skills are being upgraded at about
the same rate in rural and
urban establishments. Furthermore, educational attainment, which closely
tracks skill measures, rose as quickly among rural adults as
among urban adults in
the 1990s. In some rural communities, the loss of low-skill jobs creates
a hardship for workers lacking training opportunities or alternative
employment.
But the growth in expertise and skills needed for a more technologically
advanced economy should benefit the rural workforce overall.
These trends are primarily
evidenced by shifts in the employment mix within industries, rather than
by the employment shifts between industries that often attract
the most attention.