Rural Towns Are Aging, Cash-Strapped and in Desperate Need of Workers

I genuinely think that allowing more people to work from home would greatly help this problem. I knew someone a few years ago that was hired on who lived in rural Iowa in a farm with her husband. She normally wouldn't be able to get a job in marketing as she would have to drive hours each day to get to work. But. WFH allowed her that ability to stay on the farm and also work an office job. Lots of people moved to more remote places when WFH was more widely accepted at companies. Not to mention there's a housing crisis and lots of cheap properties in rural towns. I know it seems like there's nothing to be had in a small rural town, but you have to remember that those things were once provided by the people who lived there who don't anymore. The more people who move to a rural town, the more demand and money there is and the more small businesses will flourish. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but I'm also sure that WFH would help. Some people really would prefer to live in a small town if they could.

My old boss moved to his lake house / cabin since he could work from home full time. I know many people who would love to if they could. Universal WFH could have massive boons for small towns if it was allowed.
I was WFH in a rural area for a long time, and my relatively high income and flexible schedule gave me a lot of time to get involved in the community, while supporting a ton of local businesses.
Yep. My household is WFH 100% and we moved to a small town (Iowa). We're not especially high-paid for the tech industry, but we are above the local median income by almost 10x. We try to spend with local businesses as much as possible to help get money into the local economy, but there's only so much locally-made/available stuff.

FDR's New Deal was designed to help small communities prosper. Reagan scraped as many of those policies as he could.

And then every president afterward made it worse. And why wouldn't they? 99% of voters keep enthusiastically stamping their approval on it every two years.
- Clinton almost completely paid off the debt. The first thing Bush Jr. did was send out tax relief checks because he was scared of having a surplus that people would want to spend. Bush Jr didn't raise taxes even when he had two wars going.
  
  Don't blame 'every President' blame the GOP.

Duh: Rural towns usually have terrible Internet. Who would want to live with that every day‽

That, and they're also full of MAGA-type Republicans that hate anyone and everyone who isn't exactly like them.

With the way rural voters get disproportionate voting power its insane that rural broadband isn't everywhere. Shows how money interests take over rural interests in that party
Duh: Rural towns usually have terrible Internet. Who would want to live with that every day‽

In my experience this isn't always the case. A small town I lived in once had gigabit for $80/month whereas the city I lived in before that had 250mbps internet for something absurd like $270/month and it even had a bandwidth cap.

Right now I live in the middle of nowhere and the fastest thing available is 100mbps but it's only $50/month. I probably have a better internet situation than most people at least in terms of what I'm getting for the price.

I think some small internet companies just didn't get the memo on enshitification.
I live in a very small town, and I have 1.5 Gbps internet, and haven't met a single trumper.

Okay, rent/mortgage is 3 grand a month and many of the positions they're bitching about filling pay 40-60k a year. The aging workforce got their mortgage decades ago and have a dirt cheap cost of living.

This isn't a small town issue, it's just where the symptoms have a more direct affect. We're all pretty equally trapped, fucked, and/or hopeless. Yay capitalism.

Okay, rent/mortgage is 3 grand a month

You have no idea WTF you're talking about. Mortgages in rural towns are absolutely no where near $3,000/mo. Not even close. Try under a grand.

Let me go pick a random rural town in upstate, NY: Newark, NY. The population was 9,017 at the 2020 census according to wikipedia.

Here's a house: 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1,400 sqft., 0.2 acre lot: $90,000. Estimated monthly payment: $569. If you take home $40k a year after taxes, that's 1/6 of your monthly income.

That took 5 seconds of searching. Sure, it might need a new roof soon, and new carpets, and some paint. But all that makes it $130k tops.

So what the hell are you smoking? Do you even know what rural means?
- 130k renovation for a 90k house. Might wanna take those 130k in consideration for the monthly cost.

I didn't realize Canada was having the same problems.

I used to be a mobile printer and computer repair man driving to small towns in Texas. What I learned was those towns were terrible and the people were not fun to be around. These towns are not going to stop the aging demographics from growing if they make quality of life worse than what it is now.

You mean where all the redneck republicans who gleefully want to take my right away live? Nah, I’ll pass.

I live in a small town, and I love it. Rent is cheap, I can bicycle to the grocery store, and it's just 30 minutes from a major city where all the cool stuff happens! The only downside is nobody wants to commute to my place for house parties 😅

Additionally, if your small town has a small town theater, that's where all the liberals are lol Just go volunteer for a play and you'll make friends

Same. We absolutely love living in a small town.
I live in a small town, and I love it. Rent is cheap, I can bicycle to the grocery store, and it’s just 30 minutes from a major city where all the cool stuff happens! The only downside is nobody wants to commute to my place for house parties

Same! I consider that last bit a win, a couple of times a year is enough for me.

if your small town has a small town theater

We did, but they didn't make enough to stay in business. One of the local churches bought it instead of paying to renovate their place of worship. I haven't been over there, but I assume their youth movie nights are top-notch.
Can confirm. My local group assumes you are queer and neurospicy until you state otherwise.

Rural towns are boring.

The town? Yes, they're usually pretty boring.

But if you can't find something to do out in nature then I'd argue it is you who is the boring one.

Then again, I like boring so YMMV
- We have nature in the cities. Or I could drive 45 minutes and be in nature, I don’t need to live in some rundown crack village with a bunch of alcoholics and backwards KKK people to experience nature.
- Essentially tells Lemmy, who are 90% terminally online, to touch grass
  
  Even if you didn't mean it that way, that seems to be how people are taking it. You're right tho, people who can't entertain themselves outside are boring..
Sounds like a classist remark from some ignorant city dweller that cheats rural workers out of fruits of their labor.
- This sounds like a wow shut the fuck up remark.
- I live in a rural town... there's nothing to do.
- If you want people to live in your boring rural towns, you have to compensate them better.
- Sounds like a myopic remark from some ignorant country bumpkin who is at best an apologist for (and at worst a supporter of) "small gub'mint" stripping civil rights, making it harder to vote, legislating women's bodies, harassing BIPOC, and trying to eliminate trans people. 🖕

Wow, a lot of assholes in the comments. Not everyone in rural towns is a right wing redneck. I'll take my small town of 12,000 people where my commute is 10 minutes by bike over a big city where my commute could be like 1-2 hours.

The small town a lot of my family lived in has literally nothing to do. Going to Walmart and teen pregnancy were basically the activities of choice. Now meth (and teen pregnancy, tbh) is the activity of choice because people are so fucking bored. You couldn't pay me to live there. Plus, the jobs that are available are almost universally garbage. It's great that you're happy there, but plenty of the people who live in those towns are miserable but don't have the ability to leave for some reason or another.
- My town isn't big enough for a Walmart lol. People just hang out at Tim Hortons all day which I agree is lame as shit. But there's plenty to do if you like the outdoors and most of the stuff you can do in the big city you can do around here. It's just a longer drive. Like if want to see a movie it's about a 30 minute drive to the next town over. Laser tag and trampoline parks are like an hour.
  
  I'd much rather have to travel long distances for recreational activities than for work. My kids actually get to play outside in nature, experience wildlife, eat fresh local produce, go swimming in beautiful lakes. I grew up here and in my teens I wanted to gtfo of this boring place to live in a big city. But as I grew older and spent time in those big cities I realized life was much better for me and my family here.
  
  Lastly, your point about jobs is 100% correct. Jobs are shit, I'm just lucky we have a federal government office in our town where I can make a decent wage that's not adjusted for where I live.
Not everyone in rural towns is a right wing redneck

Not everyone, sure. Please post the name/location of your town so we can all have a look at it with Google Street View!
- Why would anyone voluntarily doxx themselves on a platform full of angry extremists?
It's prejudice, plain and simple. They're ruled by their ignorant preconceptions based on the limited exposure they get online. Yes, there are shitty small towns, just like there are awful cities, but many small towns are amazing. These people wouldn't know, because they've never left their own neighborhood.

So, born n raised in a rural town of 3000. I'm reading some of these comments and wondering if my definition of rural has been too narrow...