One of my favorite email news lists is Russ Fletcher’s MATR Newsletter. It is a twice weekly compilation of several dozen interesting articles on items of interest in the area of economic development, primarily in rural areas. If you aren’t a subscriber, you should be. Sign up here.
An interesting section of his website is where he archives articles within a specific area of interest. One of those areas is Developing Tech Jobs in Rural Communities. Two articles on that site that were particularly interesting were: Microsoft expanding operations in North Dakota and Average Seattle worker can’t afford to live here.
In the first article, Microsoft announced plans to increase their 1,200 employee campus in Fargo, ND from two to three buildings because of the lower costs of operation. The second article bemoaned the fact that the typical school teacher in Seattle can only afford to buy about half of a typical house or face a commute of over one hour.
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I like the idea of developing Tech Jobs in Rural Communities. One of the big issues I see is that depending on the market it is hard to bring in new talent. I think you would really have to develop IT talent at some level localy (this would be tough because some of it is so specialized and not everyone can do it even with training). Most quality IT people are not going to move to a rural area unless they have ties to the area or they are getting significantly more money. Even locally here in St. Louis I have a tough time getting good quality programmers because it is so competitive right now.
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