In January 2026, the USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) published the latest update of Rural America at a Glance: 2025 Edition.  The companion chart to this post is from that publication, but is also the same chart that was published for the first time in 3 months, on the ERS Charts of Note this week.  (It is so nice to see ERS posting these charts again after the 3-month pause).

Metropolitan (Metro) and Nonmetropolitan (Non-metro) counties serve as a general proxy for rural and urban populations.  They are not the same thing.  Effectively, the counties that contain an urban center become the hub of the metropolitan statistical area.  The St. Louis Missouri Metropolitan Statistical Area contains 14 counties and the City of St. Louis.  Bond County, Illinois, the home of Biomass Rules, is 45 east of St. Louis in Illinois.  Bond county is a very rural county of 16,000 people.  It is part of the St. Louis Statistical Area because a significant number of residents of this rural county commute to work in the St. Louis area.  So the metro counties are composed of urban centers and their rural collar counties.  Non-metro counties are fairly exclusively rural.

So Non-metro counties are sparsely populated.  Employment can be a challenge.  For decades, US rural and non-metro counties have been losing residents.  How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they have seen Pa-ree (1919)?  Generations have been moving off the farm to find work and higher lifestyles in larger cities.

This chart from the recently released, Rural America at a Glance, illustrates that the natural growth cycle in nonmetropolitan counties are negative.  The factor that allows populations to be positive, is that more individuals still migrate into nonmetropolitan counties.  But individuals migrate into these rural areas at a lower rate than individuals migrate into the metropolitan counties.  This post’s chart provides 4 years of population data.

There are nonmetropolitan and rural counties that are growing.  But on average more of these counties are losing residents than gaining them.

This is a great chart.  Thanks USDA, ERS for providing excellent thought leadership on this issue!