On this episode, Marnie Werner, Vice President of Research & Operations, interviews colleague Kelly Asche about this years State of Rural report. Every year the Center for Rural Policy and Development publishes the State of Rural – a report outlining the various economic and demographic trends taking place in rural Minnesota. Most years it’s a simple update since trends tend to shift and move slowly over the course of a decade. Unless, that is, a significant event takes place which disrupts the trends. And that’s exactly the era we are living – both the pandemic and the predicted demographic shifts have hit home and are disrupting the trend lines.
Instead of small adjustments and tweaks to the language, this years State of Rural report needed some significant reworking to represent the major shifts that are occurring. In particular, the in-migration of people to our rural counties across Minnesota and the out-migration away from the seven-county metro.