If you’re making career plans, you
may have a definite preference for the urban lifestyle or the rural lifestyle.
Some people prefer the diversity, lively cultural scene, public transportation,
really good restaurants, and fast pace of city life. Others would rather enjoy
the big horizons, closeness to nature, traditional values, quiet, and slow pace
of rural life.
If you have already made your
choice of a career goal, you may have already settled this issue. Some careers,
such as those in the performing arts, are very difficult to sustain in a rural
area. On the other hand, many occupations in agriculture and mining require the
open countryside that is scarce in urban areas.
But let’s assume that you have
not yet made your career choice. One factor to consider is that, all things
being equal, there tend to be more job openings in urban areas simply because
there are so many businesses. Of course, you also face more competition in
cities because there are so many workers with skills like yours. Another
two-edged sword is the higher pay that urban jobs usually command; this may be
offset by the higher cost of living (especially for housing and locally
provided services) in urban areas.
So I’m not going to try to
influence your thinking on this issue. I’ll assume that you have a definite
preference for either urban or rural living but have not yet settled on a
career goal, either as a first occupation or as a midcareer shift. So let me
show to you which occupations have a high concentration in either urban or
rural settings, and maybe you can find one that matches your skills and not
just your preferences for location.
To calculate the urban percentage for each occupation for
which I could get information, I identified the 38 largest metropolitan areas
out of all 380 metro areas for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports
workforce size (in the Occupational Employment Statistics data). For each
occupation, I summed the number of workers employed in these 38 metro areas and
then divided it by the total number of workers in that same occupation
throughout the United States.
For the following list, I set
the cutoff for this urban percentage at 70. In other words, this list shows
those occupations for which at least 70 percent of the workers are employed in
the largest cities. The occupations are ordered to put those with the highest
urban percentage at the top of the list.
Occupation Urban
Percentage
Fashion Designers 85%
Agents and Business
Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes 82%
Parking Lot
Attendants 80%
Film and Video Editors 79%
Media and Communication
Workers, All Other 78%
Art Directors 78%
Political Scientists 75%
Sound Engineering
Technicians 74%
Multimedia Artists and
Animators 74%
Software Developers,
Applications 74%
Producers and Directors 74%
Economists 73%
Financial Analysts 72%
Sales Engineers 72%
Securities, Commodities,
and Financial Services Sales Agents 72%
Brokerage Clerks 72%
Medical Scientists,
Except Epidemiologists 72%
Manicurists and
Pedicurists 71%
Software Developers,
Systems Software 71%
Marketing Managers 71%
Writers and Authors 71%
Actors 71%
Computer Network
Architects 70%
Information Security
Analysts 70%
Market Research Analysts
and Marketing Specialists 70%
Computer and Information
Systems Managers 70%
Baggage Porters and
Bellhops 70%
To calculate the rural percentage for occupations, I used
a procedure similar to what I used for the urban percentage. However, instead
of using workforce figures that applied to metropolitan areas, I used figures
for the 172 nonmetropolitan areas for which the BLS reports occupational
earnings. These nonmetro areas are regions such as east central Pennsylvania, the Low Country of South Carolina, coastal Oregon, and the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan.
In the following list, the
cutoff percentage is 25, which means that at least 25 percent of the workforce
of each occupation is employed in the 172 nonmetropolitan areas. The
occupations with the highest rural percentages are at the top of the list.
Occupation Rural
Percentage
Mine Shuttle Car
Operators 71%
Roof Bolters, Mining 66%
Logging Equipment
Operators 63%
Postmasters and Mail
Superintendents 53%
Forest and Conservation
Technicians 51%
Roustabouts, Oil and Gas 51%
Farm Equipment Mechanics
and Service Technicians 47%
Sawing Machine Setters,
Operators, and Tenders, Wood 45%
Loading Machine
Operators, Underground Mining 43%
Service Unit Operators,
Oil, Gas, and Mining 40%
Continuous Mining Machine
Operators 40%
Wellhead Pumpers 40%
Slaughterers and Meat
Packers 40%
Highway Maintenance
Workers 39%
Helpers--Extraction
Workers 39%
Rotary Drill Operators,
Oil and Gas 38%
Log Graders and Scalers 38%
Woodworking Machine
Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing 35%
Legislators 35%
Textile Winding,
Twisting, and Drawing Out Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders 34%
Agricultural Equipment
Operators 33%
Meat, Poultry, and Fish
Cutters and Trimmers 33%
Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch,
and Aquacultural Animals 32%
Explosives Workers,
Ordnance Handling Experts, and Blasters 31%
Derrick Operators, Oil
and Gas 29%
Correctional Officers and
Jailers 28%
Textile Knitting and
Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders 28%
Water and Wastewater
Treatment Plant and System Operators 28%
Electrical Power-Line
Installers and Repairers 27%
Operating Engineers and
Other Construction Equipment Operators 27%
Fallers 26%
Furnace, Kiln, Oven,
Drier, and Kettle Operators and Tenders 26%
Foresters 25%
Welders, Cutters,
Solderers, and Brazers 25%
Mine Cutting and
Channeling Machine Operators 25%
First-Line Supervisors of
Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers 25%
Excavating and Loading
Machine and Dragline Operators 25%
