Changing Employment Patterns on the Northern and Central Great Plains

The Great Plains are sometimes characterized as an economically lagging region. To shed some light on the region sprospects, the locational and structural changes in employment patterns in the northern and central Great Plains were examinedfor the 1980 to 1990 period. County-level data were drawn from CD-ROM census publications and matched with locational references using Atlas *GIS . Shift-share computations were undertaken for the region as a whole and for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. Employment declined sharply in agriculture and construction, but increased in the service sectors. Compared with the nation as a whole, the region competed poorly in many sectors, though it performed superbly in manufacturing and came close to holding its own in the business service and public administration sectors. Prospects appear brightfor the metropolitan centers on the region s periphery, but the bulk of the territory will likely see only localized points ofgrowth. The Great Plains increasingly have been treated as a distinct major region of the United States (Mather 1972), one noted for its immense size and limited topographic expression, semiarid grassland environment, harsh winters, and a traditional focus on grain and livestock production. The population density is low except in or near metropolitan areas on the eastern and western periphery, and ongoing population loss characterizes a majority of counties (Archer 1992). The farm population has been declining since the 1930s as modernization brought extensive farm consolidation (Baltensperger . 1987). With alternative employment opportunities limited in rural areas, people migrated to the growing urban centers on the outer margin of the Plains or to a more distant destination like California. A clear dichotomy has evolved: the largely rural and small-town core of the study area and the set of metropolitan areas on the periphery. While there is general optimism about the future for the metropolitan areas, there is much pessimism regarding the largely nonmetropolitan core. Some observers predict widespread