“We just don’t have as many businesses as we used to.” It’s one of those rural myths that I hear variations of all the time. “Our downtown is all boarded up. All the businesses are gone.” “Census numbers show fewer employers.” “We did a business count, and the number of businesses is way down.” But…
In an era when we’re encouraging every rural business to look further outside their local market, it’s interesting to see a business go the other direction. Most rural auction companies use the internet to promote the items at their sales and to accept bids from far-flung customers. But one auction service I heard…
I thought you’d like this, from a recent local economic development newsletter that I received: “We just finished our annual business count. We use this comprehensive employment database to drive our economic development, planning and to keep aware of trends….We don’t include home-based or mobile businesses.” Anyone else see something wrong with that or…
After we talked about the difficulties in finding good people for low-level jobs in rural areas, I wanted to follow up with a challenge Mike shared with us: “Getting people to live here or come here for the jobs we have open NOW!” Mike’s not the only one with workforce challenges. It was one of…
One of the top issues named in our recent Survey of Rural Challenges was how to retain young people. It ranked the number one concern in 2015, and number 2 in 2017. One participant commented, “We have already identified that to survive, we will need entrepreneurial millennials who want to be rural by choice. The…
“How do I attract good employees for low-level jobs?” That was one of the responses to our Survey of Rural Challenges. You don’t. That would be my answer. You will have to re-imagine and remake those jobs. Let’s look at a lumber mill, a real one in a real small town that friends from Oregon…
“Everything gigantic in American [retail] is about to get smaller or die.” James Kunstler wrote in 2013. He said big box retailers were on the brink of scale implosion, and that “every element of economic reality is now poised to squash them.” Fast forward to 2017, and we’ve gone over the brink. Washington Post reported last month…
SmallBizSurvival.com and SaveYour.Town joined forces to conduct an international rural survey of 250 rural people during 2017. Some of the results don’t match up with the usual stories we hear about rural. A few surprising results: More people mentioned a lack of workers than mentioned a lack of jobs More people were interested in…
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