Rural population not changing much

Rural Blog - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service has released the 2020 edition of its Rural America at a Glance report, a summary of broad rural trends in population, employment, poverty and income. This year's edition focuses on recent economic and demographic conditions in rural areas resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing recession.

Here are some of the general, topline findings from the report:

• The U.S. population in counties outside metropolitan areas was 46.1 million in July 2019, essentially unchanged from 46.2 million in 2010.
• The rural population grew by 0.02% between 2018 and 2019, a small increase after six previous years of population decline, but well below the urban increase of 0.6%. 
• Rural counties added jobs every year during the past decade but at less than half the rate of urban counties during most years, including 2018-19 (0.6 percent growth in rural counties compared with 1.4 percent growth in urban counties).
• Rural poverty rates dropped from a 2013 rate of 18.4% to 16.1% in 2018, still well above the urban rate of 12.6%.