(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Recreation-Dependent Counties Attract Remote Workers [1]

['Sarah Melotte', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']

Date: 2025-03-07

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox.



I work remotely. That means I start my weekday mornings drinking a cup of black coffee on the couch with my dog snoring in my lap. I use the peaceful quiet of the early hours to write and answer emails. While writing this article, I watched a Carolina Wren sing on the birdfeeder that dangles from my porch railing. If the weather is nice, which it often is, I’ll go for a run and take a shower on my lunch break.

Remote work allowed me to move with my partner from South Carolina to a small town in Western North Carolina for her job. It also lets me reserve my social energy for time with friends and volunteering in my community. Needless to say, I’m a fan of working from home.

And I’m not the only introvert who prefers it this way. A 2024 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested that remote work can improve job satisfaction and productivity. A few randomized experiments of individual businesses showed that remote work saved companies money by reducing turnover and dropping hiring costs.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to any of you that a 2024 Gallup survey found that the share of the workforce that works from home is higher than it was before the pandemic. In 2019, only about 8% of the Gallup survey respondents said they worked exclusively from home, compared to 26% of respondents in 2024.

But where, exactly, do these remote workers live?

In 2023, metropolitan workers were 75% more likely to work from home than rural workers. That year, 14% of the urban or suburban workforce was remote, while only about 8% of rural residents worked from home.

Another way of looking at the metropolitan advantage in remote work is that metropolitan workforce makes up about 87% of overall workforce nationally, but they make up 92% of the remote workforce.

(The data for this analysis comes from the American Community Survey, an annual study by the Census Bureau. However, the dataset only provides accurate data for every U.S. county in 5-year average intervals. Because it aggregates five years of data rather than capturing a single point in time, it differs from the Gallup data cited earlier. It also has yet to reflect the shift in remote work trends at the county level since the pandemic.)

In rural America, the percentage of the rural workforce that worked remotely varied significantly by region and industry.

In rural counties with economies dependent on recreation and outdoor amenities, a greater share of the workforce was remote compared to counties dependent on other industries. In 2023, about 12% of the working population worked remotely in recreation-dependent counties. But in some of those counties, remote workers made up more than a quarter of all workers.

For example, San Juan County, Colorado, is a rural community where 28%, or 114 out of the 410 adults in the workforce, worked remotely in 2023. Recreation and tourism are the dominant industries in San Juan County, which borders the popular ski town of Telluride.

This doesn’t mean those remote workers are employed in recreation-related jobs. It’s more likely an indication that places with lots of recreation amenities attract people who can work remotely. These are places with ski slopes, hiking, boating, and other activities that make them attractive to certain kinds of people. And apparently, a good number have jobs that can be done remotely.

Counties with different types of economies don’t have as many remote workers. In rural manufacturing and mining-dependent counties, the remote workforce made up only about 6% of the total workforce in 2023. While counties with economies dependent on agriculture or state and local government, the remote workforce made up about 8% of the working population.

These economic types come from the Economic Research Service (ERS), a branch of the USDA devoted to analyzing economic trends to inform policymakers, industry groups, and other federal agencies. The ERS assigns all U.S. counties into one of six mutually-exclusive categories that best describes economic dependence.

But let’s stick with recreation counties for now. How does the rural workforce in recreation-dependent communities differ regionally?

The following graph focuses only on recreation counties, showing the percentage of the rural workforce that worked from home in 2023 in eight different regions.

Western states and New England had the greatest percentage of rural remote workers compared to other regions, while Alaska and Hawaii had the lowest percentage of remote workers.

Fifteen percent of all rural workers in recreation counties on the West Coast and in the Southwest worked from home in 2023, for example. But that number was only 8% in Alaska and Hawaii, and 9% in the Midwest.

In Taos County, New Mexico, a rural recreation-dependent community in the northern part of the state, 17% of the workforce was remote in 2023. That’s equal to about 5,100 of 29,000 workers.

In the Interior Northwest, a region that includes Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, 14% of the workforce in rural recreation counties worked remotely in 2023.

But in rural Valley County, Idaho, remote workers made up a quarter of the total workforce in 2023. Valley County is surrounded by picturesque federal land, like the Payette and Boise National Forests. It’s a popular destination spot for hiking, fishing, and biking.





Related

Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

[END]
---
[1] Url: http://dailyyonder.com/recreation-dependent-counties-attract-remote-workers/2025/03/07/

Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/