This report synthesizes findings and recommendations presented at the Southern Rural Labor Force Conference held in New Orleans in October 1998. Recognizing that the South's recent economic prosperity resides primarily in metropolitan areas, this report focuses on the readiness of the rural South to work in the future and on ways to improve the…

Despite increased government investments in education, West Virginia continues to have one of the nation's highest high school dropout rates and is among the states with the highest unemployment rates. Human capital theory provides the conceptual basis for evaluating the relationship between investment in education and economic development. An…

Lying within the Cumberland Plateau of Appalachia, the Kentucky River Area Development District (KRADD) comprises eight rural Kentucky counties: Breathitt, Knott, Lee, Leslie, Letcher, Owsley, Perry, and Wolfe. This report reviews regional history of economic development and examines socioeconomic indicators, including education, poverty, and the…

In the late 1970s both jobs and population were growing more rapidly outside metropolitan areas. As a group, nonmetropolitan counties not adjacent to a metropolitan area experienced a faster rate of employment growth than metropolitan areas between 1975-79. Even in rural counties (no urban place of 2,500 or more) not adjacent to a metropolitan…

Women's vulnerability to increased landlessness and other economic factors has created a need in most developing nations for year-round, rural, non-agricultural employment opportunities for women. Census data from 56 Third World countries reveal that women are generally underrepresented in the paid labor force and overrepresented in the…

Several simulations of population, income, and employment in rural and urban America during 1970-2000 were made based on alternative assumptions. The assumptions entailed implementation of certain policies that might effect a more equal rural-urban balance by the year 2000, in addition to a continuation of current trends. If basic trends continue,…

Data on a commercial and an agricultural Guatemalan population indicates most peasants derive income from both agricultural and nonagricultural sources. While disguised employment does not utilize labor at its most efficient level, development projects should complement traditional economic activities and recognize that diversion of peasant labor…

Numbering approximately 62,005 and representing 15.3% of the total Alaska population in 1975, Alaska Natives are a finite and predominately rural subpopulation. However, a significant portion of the Alaska Native Work Force (estimated at 13,854) now resides in the major urban areas and is available to the Statewide Work Force. Statistics from May,…

In 1971, Louisiana's Rural Manpower Service provided the agricultural and rural non-agricultural populations with such services as placement services which included promotion and development of training programs with priority to veterans and other special applicant groups; processing clearance orders and foreign labor importation requests;…

The Rural Manpower Service Section of the Louisiana Department of Employment Security provided recruitment, placement, and other Employment Service programs to the agricultural and rural non-agricultural populations. Goals of the Rural Manpower Service were to: serve the agricultural workers and rural population in accordance with existing Federal…

Due to continued changes in Louisiana's agricultural economy, the supply and demand for seasonal and year-round farm workers changed during 1970. Therefore, the Rural Manpower Service's major emphases were directed toward worker and employer relations, recruitment, day-haul operations, and limited services to rural non-agricultural workers and…

As part of a long-term study of the utilization of Alaska Native manpower, new data is combined with that of a similar 1975 study to estimate the Alaska Native and non-Native civilian population and work force for 1978 and 1980. Contrary to 1975 predictions the population ratio of Alaska non-Natives to Natives remains constant at 82%/18%. The…

The research brief and the 1978 study on which it is based provide a means for establishing the size and utilization of the Alaska Native Work Force, as well as estimates of the number of Native workers available regularly or periodically to the Statewide Work Force. Because official data sources conflict, means developed between highest and…

This book examines the education, training, and skill supply of the rural workforce; the role of rural workforce quality in rural development; and the barriers that prevent many rural people from obtaining the skills needed for good jobs. Data are drawn from large national surveys of schools, students, and households. The first three chapters…

The report includes a conference summary, introductory remarks, keynote address, four conference papers and comments on each, and summary of major policy issues. The keynote address reviews policies and practices affecting migrant children, the roots of the migratory farm labor system, impact of migrancy on families; services for migrant children,…