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I'm 27 and single and would love to live in a small town. Life is simpler.
Well than maybe we just have bad PR. Or possibly it's back to the jobs issue. There are jobs here, but you often need "connections" and either way they might tend to be in a limited number of fields. Rural areas are generally not going to have as diverse an amount of jobs. If you'd be okay teaching high school, working as a mechanic, accounting, nursing, carpentry, store work, at a post office, or the like maybe you should try it! (Granted there's also farming, but I'm not sure I'd recommend someone totally new to farming decide to just start doing it. Those others there's at least a chance you could've learned how to do them in a city.)
Well than maybe we just have bad PR. Or possibly it's back to the jobs issue. There are jobs here, but you often need "connections" and either way they might tend to be in a limited number of fields. Rural areas are generally not going to have as diverse an amount of jobs. If you'd be okay teaching high school, working as a mechanic, accounting, nursing, carpentry, store work, at a post office, or the like maybe you should try it! (Granted there's also farming, but I'm not sure I'd recommend someone totally new to farming decide to just start doing it. Those others there's at least a chance you could've learned how to do them in a city.)
A fair number of IT professionals can work from pretty much anywhere, which is an attainable option.
The cost of living in the rural areas is lower than cities, so a high-paying job is not needed.
Also, some rural areas are much nicer than other rural areas. You still have to make contacts and connections as well as deal with the locals quite a bit.
I see suburbs and small cities as the real small-town killers, not huge metropolises. It's tough to make the case for a tiny town with limited jobs, diversity, and entertainment when you can still have a safe and quiet lifestyle in a small city or suburb of a larger one.
The Great Plains counties are agriculturally dependent, meaning that they have very little employment outside the core ag sector. That is why the frontier is reappearing in the Plains as the population density drops back to 7< people per square mile, which is the Census Bureau definition of a "frontier county." Most counties in the central and northern Plains now have that designation and many will quickly become frontier over the next 10-20 years due to the factors mentioned in the article. That is also why the Great Plains West has little in common with the Midwest core and Great Lakes Midwest that have much higher population densities in their rural counties along with a somewhat more diverse economy that isn't tied only to agriculture.
Same here. Other than being a bit of a gym rat, I don't really get in on any of the "urban lifestyle" that many tout off as being popular.
Some small towns do have gyms at least of a sort. One of my classmates ran something like "Curves" in town. And unless it's a real isolated small town there's probably a gym within a half-hour's drive of many small towns. If you're against taking such a long drive there are "walking groups" in many small towns, I think, where people walk around town sometimes carrying weights. It might not be what you're used to though, I'd grant that.
Although I might say if you're against driving over 15-30 mile distances many rural places are likely not going to be for you as in many of them you will probably have to drive, or have someone drive you, to get to the hospital at least.
Rural America is not "disappearing." It's right where it always was. It's gotten even MORE rural (i.e., with less people).
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