Rural Communities

Saying yes to a job in a small town when you live in a big city — or vice versa — involves big changes and may require sacrifices. Weigh factors such as cultural offerings, sports and recreation opportunities, traffic and the pace of life. Even "the weather can really influence people’s happiness," says Ms. Moore of Johns Hopkins. The question: Can you live with the differences?

Commuting can be stressful and time-consuming. Here are some ideas to make your daily commute more interesting and comfortable:

Political and business leaders in metro areas increasingly view traffic congestion as hurting their ability to compete with other regions for new businesses and young professionals.

Affinity marketing programs are being done in many regions around the country. The concept is pretty straightforward: If you recruit people to bring their businesses to the community who already share a passion for the community’s values, they will be more likely to share that sense of community.

"The catch is we need people with aptitude to do sophisticated assembly work, and sometimes we don’t know if they’ll work out until we try them."

"A community that has talented people will draw work to itself."

"We’ve had to be a lot more proactive about it," hitting the university and community college circuit to recruit workers as well as advertising the positions

Organizations are increasing productivity whether employees are at a primary work location, secondary, home, customer site or other remote location. Work Anywhere and Cool Commute programs get increased job results with fewer wasted hours from people trapped in gridlocked traffic.

"Utah invites you to explore our expanding jobs market," the ad said, adding, "Dozens of Utah companies have placed engineers at the top of their wish list this season. You could be one of those engineers!"

The Bay Area’s tech talent pool is thinning, the time to fill jobs is lengthening and promising job candidates are getting multiple job offers.