By DOUG GRAVES

Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Just as urban sprawl creeps into rural regions, the job growth in some of Ohio’s rural areas are steadily increasing as well.

“Since 2010, job growth in Ohio’s rural areas has been strong,” said Mark Partridge, an economics professor at The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES).

Between 2010-17, only six states had better rural job growth than Ohio. In Ohio, solid rural job growth has been observed near Wooster, Van Wert, and Athens. The rural counties of Harrison, Morgan, Wyandot, and Holmes around Columbus have shown steady growth as well. On average, these counties grew in rural employment by 4.1 percent.

By comparison, Indiana saw a 1.8 percent increase over the same period.

Partridge said between 2010-18, Ohio’s non-metropolitan areas with populations fewer than 50,000 and not within commuting distance of major cities had a 7.6 percent increase in the number of jobs – nearly 10 times the national average.

During the same period, the growth of jobs in Ohio’s major cities was only slightly higher, with a 9.2 percent increase.

“That Ohio’s rural and urban job growth rates are nearly comparable is pretty significant,” Partridge said. “In Ohio’s rural counties without connections to cities with more than 10,000 people, the corresponding job growth rate was at 8.4 percent.

“As long as this economic expansion continues, rural Ohio is going to fare pretty well compared to the rest of the U.S. Rural Ohio is definitely not considered on life support.”

Partridge was keynote speaker at the Spring 2019 Outlook and Policy Conference “Challenges and Opportunities for Economic Development in Ohio,” last month in Columbus. His talk was entitled “Does an Urbanizing World still need Rural America?”

“Small Ohio towns such as Wapakoneta, Celina, and Urbana have fared better in attracting new jobs than the booming Columbus metropolitan area,” he said. “Such success in small rural towns is rather remarkable when compared to the rest of the country.”

Not all of rural Ohio, though, is faring well in terms of attracting new employers. Partridge pointed out many rural areas with economies closely tied to agriculture are still suffering from downturns in the prices and demand for soybeans, corn, and other commodities.

Assisting rural employment is the Ohio Rural Business Growth Program, which is designed to increase capital investment in businesses located in rural areas. The program provides incentives to investors that capitalize companies with principal businesses in a county with fewer than 200,000 people.

The program awards tax credit allocation authority to rural business investment companies or small business investment companies that serve as intermediaries between investors and projects. The investor provides cash to these authorized investment companies in exchange for the tax credit.

The investment companies then deposit those investments into a rural business growth fund, using the fund to finance projects in rural areas.