When I set out several weeks ago to pen an essay on rural job creation, I did not intend to turn this into a multi-month series. But as I dove in to the first essay, it became apparent that, if we truly want to make an impact, create jobs, and see our communities grow, we need to examine the topic in all of its complexity, dimension, and importance.
Strengthening our economy via good, stable jobs is a task that underlies every other topic that we discuss in revitalizing our rural communities. Does your city need to improve its infrastructure? It needs to grow its tax base (in Texas, that means both sales tax and property tax) to pay for those improvements. Do you want to increase your population? Most people still in the labor force do not move to a town with a job or a prospect thereof. Do you want more amenities in town, from better parks to more restaurants, shopping, and entertainment? You need more people to support those amenities and more people requires, well, more jobs.
It is easy for community leaders to pass off the role of job creation to your local economic development entities, which might include both paid employees and volunteer board members. To some extent, that is a reasonable view, because these entities are usually entrusted to administer the funds that can legally be used to attract, create, and/or retain jobs. However, it should not be treated as their quest alone. Jobs do not exist in a vacuum in which they are totally unaffected by any other factor but economic development funding. Jobs and the labor force in general are affected by a whole host of factors.
Allan Savory is a pioneering ecologist from Zimbabwe. Over the last half century, he has revolutionized the manner in which thousands of ranchers and pastoralists graze their livestock and manage their grasslands across the world, with a practice called holistic management. To be clear, I could stop now and devote a dozen essays to this, one of my favorite topics in life, but I will digress for now. I bring this up for a reason beyond being the most unexpected of non-sequiturs. Holistic management is a management tool with wide application beyond just grazing of livestock on grasslands. This philosophy is detailed, such that it is found in a textbook, but to summarize, holistic management states that nature functions with interdependence between the people, animals, and land. As a result, management of any of those aspects must consider the others, because no part of it operates within a vacuum. A manager must consider the complex relationships and the external factors and context that affect each piece of the ecosystem at large.
Which brings me back to jobs. There is budding research into applying the philosophy of holistic management to local government, which I have only begun to study, but we can see the application right here in the topic of job creation. Jobs and the labor force exist within the larger context of the community and external factors have significant impacts. Local taxes, utility costs, and regulations (zoning, building permits, etc.) play a role in the decision for a business to expand or move to town. The real estate market and available space for offices, warehouses, etc. have an impact. Cost of living and quality of life for employees is a favor. In short, if it touches your daily life in a community as a business owner or resident, then it is probably a factor in the creation of new jobs.
So, with that said, why *wouldn’t* you involve other agencies, community leaders, and decision-makers in the conversation about job creation? If a community has great economic development incentives but other factors are highly unfavorable towards job creation, that’s a real problem. If your business climate is not particularly friendly towards existing businesses, why would you assume it’ll be any better for new businesses?
Allan Savory constantly preaches that context is key within management of ecosystems. So it is with job creation too. We’ve talked about improving the labor force and strengthening existing jobs, as necessary aspects to creating more jobs in town. In that respect, we see “new jobs” as part of a much larger conversation, an economic ecosystem of sorts. As we move forward, I pose this question to community leaders: have you viewed your economy in such a holistic manner? Have you examined all the factors that make your community attractive or unattractive to create those jobs?
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.
Again, well said James. Roy is a scholar of the Allan Savory School from some 35 years ago. Great parallel to the community and jobs.