Rethinking the Urban–Rural Divide: Economic Growth in America's Heartland

Recent economic development literature and popular media tend to describe rural America as mired in a state of socioeconomic decay, unable to break the vicious cycle kicked off by deindustrialization and sustained by brain drain. However, an emerging body of literature challenges these totalizing views, emphasizing the need for greater attention and nuance in rural economic research. This commentary adds to this topic, examining sector employment data over the 1991–2020 period by metropolitan and rural geographies to assess economic development in the nation's Heartland. Overall, the authors find surprising job growth rates in knowledge industries more typically associated with cities and urban agglomerations. In addition, this commentary strengthens existing findings that the nature of official metropolitan classifications erodes rural economic vitality and contributes to pervasive “left behind” narratives.