Rural U.S. population shrinking
Hispanics lead what gains census found in remote counties
OMAHA, Neb. — Rural America lost more population in the latest census, highlighting an already severe worker shortage in the nation’s farming and ranching regions and drawing calls from those industries for immigration changes to help ease the problem.
The census data released last week showed that population gains in many rural areas were driven by increases in Hispanic residents, many of whom come as immigrants to work on farms or in meatpacking plants or to start their own businesses.
“We’ve struggled on this issue for a long time to try to come up with a more reasonable, common-sense approach,” said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, which is part of a group lobbying Congress for new immigration laws. Vilifying immigrants “just makes it harder to get there.”
The population trend is clear in Nebraska, where only 24 of the state’s 93 counties gained residents. Of those 24, just eight reported an increase in the white population, suggesting that most of the growth was driven by minority group members, said David Drozd, a research coordinator for the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Center for Public Affairs Research.
Drozd crunched the census data and found that Nebraska counties with the greatest racial diversity are a “who’s who of where the meatpacking plants are,” even though many plants are in rural areas that are often perceived as mostly white.
“In the rural areas, if you didn’t have the Latino growth, employers would be struggling even more just to fill those positions,” Drozd said.
In New Mexico, populations declined in 20 rural counties across the state. Desperate for laborers for its annual chile harvest, the state this week pledged up to $5 million in federal pandemic relief to subsidize wages for pickers and workers at chile-processing plants — boosting available wages as high as $19.50 an hour.
Some Republican state legislators blamed the labor scarcity on supplemental unemployment benefits, which they say create a disincentive to work because they pay more than some low-wage jobs. Democrats see a persistent labor crisis.
The New Mexico Chile Association trade group says the industry is short about 1,350 seasonal laborers of the 3,000 workers needed.
The problem is just as bad for poultry farmers in North Carolina, where meat processors help power the economies of many rural counties. Half of the state’s 100 counties have lost residents since 2010, the census data showed.
Bob Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation, predicted that labor shortages at poultry plants will only worsen as people continue to leave rural communities and migrant workers gravitate to other industries, such as building and construction.
He said higher pay for workers and better health care and housing benefits could help alleviate widespread labor shortages, but broader changes to immigration policy are probably the best solution.
The National Pork Producers Council is pushing federal lawmakers to change the H-2A visa program so that migrant workers can remain employed longer.
In Kansas, some rural Republicans say Congress needs to find a practical solution.
Nancy Weeks, secretary of the Haskell County Republican Party in southwestern Kansas, said if immigrants living in the U.S. illegally want to move to the area and work, they should be provided a way to gain legal status “so that they pay taxes like I do.”
“I don’t have a problem with them coming here as long as they get legal,” Weeks said. “It’s the ones that don’t get legal that I have a problem with.”