APLU launches rural workforce initiative

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) is building a program to create new career pathways for low-income rural students. Through a partnership with the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development at Purdue University, the program will address the needs of rural employers by creating a model to identify rural workforce needs, developing stakeholder partnerships, mapping workforce pathways, recruiting and supporting low-income rural learners, and building entrepreneurship and leadership skills. In a press release, APLU noted that the program will work to help low-income rural students looking for their first career options while helping non-traditional working-learners, such as displaced workers.

The Federal Reserve has studied labor market outcomes in rural and urban areas and found that workers with a high school education or less in non-metropolitan areas experience higher unemployment than similar workers in metropolitan areas. Labor force participation, the measure of an economy’s active workforce, is also lower in rural regions of the country. APLU’s program seeks to address these labor concerns.