Americans who live in rural areas don’t believe good jobs are coming and they don’t want to move. We have to bring remote work to the country

ary·JobsAmericans who in rural areas don’t believe good jobs are coming and they don’t want to move

We have to bring remote work to the countryBy Mona MourshedBy Mona Mourshed Dr

Mona Mourshed is the founding global CEO of Generation, a nonfit that supports adults of all ages to achieve economic mobility through training and employment in new careers

And more and more of these would-be workers will be at risk unless we can summon the collective will to make remote job opportunities available to them

Now here’s the good news: A majority in rural regions are ready to seize these opportunities—vided we find innovative ways to give them a chance

That’s the upshot of fresh re that Generation, the non-fit I run, recently commissioned

We went into the field knowing that midcareer and older workers everywhere – though they are a growing portion of the labor force – are more ly to struggle with long-term unemployment

And knowing also that long-term, persistent poverty is far more prevalent in rural counties than urban counties

Almost half were currently unemployed

We started by confirming what we suspected: Many of these folks are hurting

A house repair, a health emergency, car trouble: such all-too-ly unbudgeted costs are disasters waiting to happen

Only one in four say they can meet their needs and for the future

Unemployment, when it strikes, is a deep hole to fall into

Nor was it surprising to find that on the supply side, local economies simply aren’t creating enough jobs

More eye-opening was the way persistent precarity has shaped our respondents’ expectation of what constitutes a good job

Asked to define a “high-quality job,” their answers had nothing to do with the levels of education or nical skills required

Instead, they focused on three essentials: competitive wages, predictable full-time hours and steady employment

Using those basic criteria as their definition, only 6% told us that the area they in supports “many” such high-quality jobs, while 35% said there are “few or none.” It was when we began bing for solutions that things got really interesting

One possible option—expecting large swathes of unemployed or under-employed rural workers to move to where the good jobs are—ved a non-starter

That inertia reflects a powerful mix of uncertainty the potential financial burdens a move entails and certainty the high emotional cost of abandoning deep ties to families and community

It’s consistent with a broader decline in geographic mobility in the U.S., which recent Brookings Institution re says has hit “historic lows.” Barring a surge in direct investment in rural America, then, what remains? Just one option: Expanding remote work opportunities

Among the multiple factors that any company would need to consider before making such an investment, we focused on one key variable, the willingness of the local workforce to try something new

And here our survey results offered a big upside surprise

Seizing those opportunities won’t be easy

Even after companies convince themselves of the case, they will still need to hone their ability and that of their vendors and partners to create online training grams that are cost-effective, that convey agreed-upon credentials, and that are ly relevant to securing jobs—all issues that our respondents identified as critical

Any future public funds invested in training will also need to address these concerns

Still, here’s at least one deeply rooted social blem that doesn’t require a grand new policy gram to meet it

Rural midcareer and older workers, our survey confirmed, are ready and willing to gain the skills needed, if and when the opportunity appears

At the moment, though, the backlash against remote work is spurring a decline in such jobs

As a first step we need to broaden our current debate the s and cons of remote work and look beyond the impact on corporate culture, ductivity and employee well-being

Yes, managing those trade-offs is complex

But it’s also largely a big city concern

For rural Americans, the stakes in finding fitable ways to expand remote work are something far more fundamental—access to today’s job market that otherwise seems sure to leave them even further in the lurch

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