> hose people do not believe the jobs exist at all, at any price point.
I used to live in a small town rural area. There were 4 employers of software engineers. I worked for one large one (~500? sw engineers), the other two were universities with poor pay and uninteresting tech prospects, and the fourth had 30 people total. I believe there's a fifth company now.
If I wanted to do more things with my career than work for one company for the next 20 years, I had to move. Remote jobs aren't very good for people without connections (because connections typically form through personal contact, something difficult in rural areas), and freelancing/consulting at the junior end is excellent for someone who excels in marketing themselves and building webapps.
Moving to a city lets me do things with my career as I want, not what the sole company wants. If the company crashes, my career is not in disarray and I don't have to move.
I simply can not recommend to anyone who is looking to make something of themselves to move to a rural area. The connections, niches, specialties, opportunities are just not found in rural areas. You have to build them up manually and it's simply not possible without deploying tremendous effort just to tread water in relation to the you-that-moved-to-a-city.
It's of course plausible that a senior person with a lifetime of connections and a deep specialty can live in Nowhere, USA, and have a solid life. But those simply don't hold true for junior/midlevel people.
A software developer does not exactly seem representative of the general population though, and especially not representative of the population that are in need of work! If we're just talking about what careers we have, then as a farmer, I imagine the employment prospects in the city are downright horrible for someone like me.
Employment prospects for farmers are dismal, as automation and modern methods make possible more land farmed under fewer people.
There are just more jobs in cities. this is why housing is such a terrible crunch in cities... crap regulations on housing development, but zillions of jobs and people crowding in for them.
You might be surprised, especially if you have the necessary skills. There is a farm labour shortage going on. I feel like you are just echoing my point here: That people don't even realize what jobs exist when they are outside the city.
> There are just more jobs in cities.
Well, of course there are. There are more people. However, the unemployment rate where I am is more than half that of the nearest large city (and population isn't decreasing). If you don't already have a job, rural areas are increasingly more likely to provide you one.
> this is why housing is such a terrible crunch in cities...
Not really, because when housing becomes expensive, your profitability from your job decreases to the point where it is no longer worth even doing. Sure, if you are software developer making six figures in SF, you are still okay (although possibly still selling yourself short[1]). But someone making minimum wage in SF? They're paying to have a job!
In truth, people want to be in cities for the lifestyle, especially for the large dating pool. Rural areas definitely fall short on those aspects.
I used to live in a small town rural area. There were 4 employers of software engineers. I worked for one large one (~500? sw engineers), the other two were universities with poor pay and uninteresting tech prospects, and the fourth had 30 people total. I believe there's a fifth company now.
If I wanted to do more things with my career than work for one company for the next 20 years, I had to move. Remote jobs aren't very good for people without connections (because connections typically form through personal contact, something difficult in rural areas), and freelancing/consulting at the junior end is excellent for someone who excels in marketing themselves and building webapps.
Moving to a city lets me do things with my career as I want, not what the sole company wants. If the company crashes, my career is not in disarray and I don't have to move.
I simply can not recommend to anyone who is looking to make something of themselves to move to a rural area. The connections, niches, specialties, opportunities are just not found in rural areas. You have to build them up manually and it's simply not possible without deploying tremendous effort just to tread water in relation to the you-that-moved-to-a-city.
It's of course plausible that a senior person with a lifetime of connections and a deep specialty can live in Nowhere, USA, and have a solid life. But those simply don't hold true for junior/midlevel people.