There’s no single definition of rural America. Some rural communities are a small, but bustling, town center surrounded by vast swatches of farm land. Other communities are mountainous with a few homes and businesses scattered about the region.

What they have in common is a population that wants to live and work in a community that offers a slower pace of life, one with financial stability. Providing quality jobs is key to making that happen. It takes a coalition of partners to make it work.

There are about 48 million people living in the U.S. in these rural communities. That’s about 15% of our population. Rural American communities makes up 71% of the country’s geography and contribute about $2.7 trillion dollars to the U.S. economy, or about 10%, and that is poised to grow.

While the number of U.S. farms continues a slow decline, and with tech playing an expanding role in all industries, the rural American job market is diversifying. The shift from traditional agricultural jobs towards manufacturing, clean energy, and health care is creating new opportunities that can provide that economic mobility and security.

Do You Need a Four-Year Degree?

In its report Who is Rural America?, McKinsey points out that “urban populations show significantly higher educational attainment, with 34% holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with only 20% in rural areas. In contrast, rural communities have a larger share of individuals whose highest level of education is a high school diploma.”

Not all these new job opportunities in rural America require a four-year diploma, but many require some sort of post-secondary education or training.

Community colleges are playing an increasingly important role in preparing people living in rural America with the skills needed to access these new quality jobs, jobs that could lead to more economic mobility while allowing them to continue to live in the rural communities they love.

Community Colleges Play a Key Role in the Rural Economy

Community colleges in any community – but particularly in rural communities – are anchor organizations and should be engaged in those conversations about what the future looks like and what talent opportunities are needed and what training is needed, according to Kirstin Yeado, senior strategy officer for Rural Learner Initiatives at Ascendium Education Group.

“In general, rural residents are just as interested in tech jobs as folks who aren’t in rural communities and they’ve had to be really creative in trying to find ways to train themselves. The partnership and collaboration between community colleges, city government, and workforce development and training organizations is absolutely critical,” she adds.

Community colleges are a fraction of the cost of a four-year education and they offer more flexible options, particularly for working learners who are balancing getting a paycheck with their education.

In rural America, Yeado says, community colleges are working with local businesses – including manufacturers, universities, and hospitals – to better understand what kind of skilled workers these employers need and then are creating training programs to develop a strong talent pipeline.

You Don’t Have to Live in a City to Code, or Start a Tech Company

In addition to the tech jobs being created by these non-agricultural industries, there’s also a movement underway to support rural entrepreneurs trying to create even more tech jobs in their communities.

The Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) is on a mission to empower rural America by connecting communities to the tech economy. Matt Dunne – the founder and executive director of the nonprofit – spoke with me earlier this year at CES 2025 in Las Vegas about the importance of making sure all rural Americans have access to the tech-driven future.

“You start with people somehow believing if you live in a rural place, you can’t code, which isn’t the case, right? But there became this view that you had to live in a city if you’re going to work in tech,” says Dunne who points out you can code from anyway and do it remotely.

He adds that supporting rural tech founders can create even more jobs, but there is a problem: isolation. These would-be founders don’t have easy access to capital, or to advice from other tech leaders who might be living in established tech centers such as Palo Alto, California or Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“We’ve been working with [rural] communities now for almost eight years, helping them to create both the strategy to leverage the assets they have, but also to secure the funding, usually through federal economic development administration dollars, to be able to stand up tech talent development programs, tech accelerators, and then the places and spaces to create density and bring people together as a tech community,” explains Dunne.

A Homegrown Workforce

Dunne says as you build the company, you have to build a workforce simultaneously, which is a benefit for the company and the community.

“If you just do the entrepreneurship side, they don’t have the talent to be able to build from there. We really work with communities on those parallel tracks so that they can have the talent pool pipeline from folks who are either coming out of a university system or people who’ve had a non-traditional pathway to education are looking for a career change.

“We have a whole team that works with employers, as well as education institutions like community colleges, so they can bring all those pieces together,” says Dunne.

Surprise, That Job is a Tech Job!

Ascendium’s Yeado encourages local residents who haven’t done so before to check with local employers and community colleges to see what job opportunities and training programs are available to them.

“Don’t assume that there aren’t tech jobs at the hospital or that there aren’t tech jobs at the university. Everybody needs tech and uses tech in some way. So, if you are interested in those jobs, they exist.”

Yeado also says don’t leave manufacturing out of your job search. “Don’t allow yourself to think that a manufacturing job is just dirty. It’s factory work. No, it’s actually quite sophisticated. The labor market is really changing and be open to exploring what those new opportunities might be.”

A Quality of Life That Appeals to Many

There are many reasons Americans choose to live and work in rural communities.

“Rural America has tremendous assets. It’s home to incredible natural beauty. It is also home to much smaller communities, a slower pace of life.

There’s an assumption that rural places are dying and that there’s nothing there. There’s art. There’s culture. There are really thriving communities,” says Yeado. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not without their challenges, just like any community.”

“We saw during the pandemic that there were a number of folks who decided to move out of big urban areas and move to more rural places. Some of them have continued to stay there.

“Everybody should have an opportunity to continue to live, work, and play in the places where they grew up or moved to. It is really important,” concludes Yeado.

“Where people reside, across both rural and urban areas, has a significant impact on their economic outcomes. Economic mobility in rural America is uneven and in need of acceleration, with many rural areas seeing declines in household income from one generation to the next,” according to the McKinsey report.

Access to quality education is one of the factors that can help change that trajectory.

What’s At Stake

CORI’s Dunne says there’s a lot at stake if we don’t help build a stronger rural American economy. I’m giving him the last word.

“One is you’re missing out on a whole bunch of really amazing perspective. If you live in a rural place, I would argue, there’s a certain grit that you have because you’re having to wear all the hats and figure out things on a regular basis.

“The bigger risk as a nation is that we become more divided. We have seen since the Great Recession an unbelievable division emerge economically between rural and urban places, one that was unprecedented, and it was all about the winners and losers of the tech economy.

“And that then starts to tug at the fabric of our nation in all kinds of ways. So, I believe it’s an imperative, both in our national competitiveness, to be able to make sure that we’re bringing all voices and minds the table, particularly folks in rural communities. But it’s also important for our nation to be able to come back together and be the nation that we all hope it will be.”