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Rural Towns Are Aging, Cash-Strapped and in Desperate Need of Workers (www.wsj.com)

submitted 4 months ago by MicroWave to c/economics

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With younger labor in short supply, aging workers often find themselves pulling double—or triple—duty to keep towns afloat

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[–] frickineh 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The small town a lot of my family lived in has literally nothing to do. Going to Walmart and teen pregnancy were basically the activities of choice. Now meth (and teen pregnancy, tbh) is the activity of choice because people are so fucking bored. You couldn't pay me to live there. Plus, the jobs that are available are almost universally garbage. It's great that you're happy there, but plenty of the people who live in those towns are miserable but don't have the ability to leave for some reason or another.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

My town isn't big enough for a Walmart lol. People just hang out at Tim Hortons all day which I agree is lame as shit. But there's plenty to do if you like the outdoors and most of the stuff you can do in the big city you can do around here. It's just a longer drive. Like if want to see a movie it's about a 30 minute drive to the next town over. Laser tag and trampoline parks are like an hour.

I'd much rather have to travel long distances for recreational activities than for work. My kids actually get to play outside in nature, experience wildlife, eat fresh local produce, go swimming in beautiful lakes. I grew up here and in my teens I wanted to gtfo of this boring place to live in a big city. But as I grew older and spent time in those big cities I realized life was much better for me and my family here.

Lastly, your point about jobs is 100% correct. Jobs are shit, I'm just lucky we have a federal government office in our town where I can make a decent wage that's not adjusted for where I live.