“We need to increase our talent and skill level.”
“We need to bring the right kind of jobs to the Panhandle.”
“How do we attract young families and professionals?”
Sound familiar? What many of these comments refer to is a group of people sometimes called “the creative class”.
Richard Florida popularized the notion of the ‘creative class’ as a driver for economic growth and worker attraction with his publication, The Rise of the Creative Class. By ‘creative class’ we mean occupations such as engineers, architects, artists, scientists, and management professionals that ‘specialize in combining knowledge and ideas in novel ways.’ Florida’s publication notes that people in these occupations are drawn to places that feature a high quality of life and that communities wanting to attract these people must take on strategies that build an environment for a high quality of life- things like attractive shopping spaces, parks, cultural activities, and biking and walking trails.
This map below breaks down rural creative class counties by whether or not they have natural amenities. It shows that Nebraska only has two creative class counties, both without amenities, and those are Cheyenne County, home to city of Sidney and Cabela’s, and Hooker County, home to Mullen and the Sandhills.
An article, What Happened to the “’Creative Class’ Job Growth Engine” During the Recession and Recovery?, by Tim Wojan of USDA Economic and Research Service looks at job growth and decline by county and the trends that emerge by whether or not these counties are urban or rural and creative class or not creative class. What is found is that metropolitan counties performed better after the recession than rural counties both with and without the presence of the creative class.
In rural areas, we would have hoped to expect that all other things being equal, resiliency would have been on par with Metropolitan Areas. But another interesting pattern emerged in the study. As the map above shows, amenities are a big draw for rural creative class counties, but after the recession the presence of amenities had far less draw that it appeared to have before. As the chart below shows, the rural counties that showed the highest rate of resiliency were counties that were creative class without natural amenities.
Wojan notes that this could be because many rural creative class non-amenity counties are adjacent to metro areas and are benefiting from their growth. Regardless, this seems to me to be good news for the Panhandle! While residents who live here know and appreciate the natural wonders of the high plains, this study indicates that economic growth in rural areas may be weighing less on merely having amenities like mountains and more on having a highly skilled and talented workforce, access to knowledge institutions, and quality infrastructure. While rural areas have a harder time competing with metro areas for these things, they are also not completely out of our control. By focusing our attention to what are shown to be drivers of the current economy, we can stand a better chance of competing to grow strong and resilient rural economies.
Wojan’s ‘upshot’ is that population is continuing to become more concentrated, and we have even seen this in the Panhandle as our ‘hub’ communities show more positive trends than the more rural areas. Wojan notes that isolated areas may struggle as proximity to major metro economic centers will continue to increase in its importance. We can’t do anything about our geographic location. What we can do is focus our attention on the drivers of the current economy and explore ways to further decrease the isolation of our area through improved technology, transportation, culture, and ways of doing work.
Panhandling 