As Opportunity Washington noted yesterday, while the unemployment rate in the Puget Sound region is low, it is higher in other parts of the state. 

Along those lines, Governing Magazine has an interesting story this month: "Can Counties Fix Rural America's Endless Recession?"

Urban America recovers from recessions, but rural America no longer seems able to. “You look all across this country and some of these places are dying,” says Seth McKee, an expert on rural politics at Texas Tech University. “They’re either going to be wiped off the map, or they’re getting smaller and smaller and there’s nothing to sustain them.”

You can hardly blame people for moving in search of better opportunities. But the result may be doubly disadvantageous for the areas they leave, as it may involve brain drain in addition to population and tax revenue loss.

“The people who grow up in these communities who are most capable of having a strong income trajectory, they leave, they go somewhere else,” [Rolf] Pendall [of the Urban Institute] says. . . .

This is putting a strain on rural governments. . . . Counties can’t just cease operations, but some in Oregon have just about given up on programs such as running jails and juvenile services or enforcing building codes. 

Although the article is a bit of a downer, it cites Oregon's Lincoln County as a bright spot with some lessons for other rural counties.

All of these projects, along with many others, came about because the Newport area has managed to build a collaborative culture, with city, county, port and state officials pulling together with private-sector actors to make things happen. . . .

Experts in the rural economy say what separates the winners from the many losers is inspired leadership on the ground, whether that’s a plant owner who figures out a way to modernize and stay profitable, or economic development officials able to find a niche by building on successful enterprises or attractions that are already in place. . . .

One example in Washington is the data centers that have been built in Chelan, Douglas, and Grant counties. Additionally, today Crosscut has a story about how there's a "natural connection between rural skills and STEM fields," and how getting rural students into those fields could help counteract the problems rural areas are facing.

[Lee] Lambert [of nonprofit advocacy group Washington STEM] said Washington STEM hopes that exposing students to these jobs could help inspire them to see new possibilities for themselves, and that connections fostered through the networks might increase educational and career opportunities for rural students.

Even better, as the story notes, opportunities for freelancing and working from home could increasingly allow "young people to live in rural areas while participating in high tech fields, thus stemming the brain drain." A win-win. (See also this post from The American Interest.)