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Abstract
Despite the economic prosperity of the last decade, nonmetro job growth, earnings, and wage progression seem destined to remain a step behind labor market outcomes in metro areas, often hindering efforts under welfare reform to move recipients into successful employment. The challenge is sometimes more difficult than an overall assessment of nonmetro areas would suggest. First, the demographic subgroups most in need of public assistance tend to have less education and lower earnings, and to experience higher unemployment, than average. Second, welfare recipients tend to be concentrated in nonmetro areas marked by chronic economic distress, which both contributes to, and reinforces, the need for public assistance.