Rural labor market resilience to extreme weather events

With extreme weather events on the rise, resilience to such events has garnered much attention in media and academia. Past research into community resilience has often focused primarily on urban areas. This study aims to evaluate the resilience of U.S. rural labor markets to four different extreme weather events - flood, hurricane, wildfire, and tornado. We utilized data from various sources and employed the De Chaisemartin and d’Haultfoeuille (2024) difference-in-difference (DIDl) estimator as well as a Cox proportional hazards model to analyze the impact of extreme weather events on county employment levels. This study found that tornadoes have the most significant negative impact on rural employment with a drop of approximately 0.3 jobs per capita for each additional $1,000 in damages per capita. Furthermore, results from our hazard model provide information into key factors associated with recovery time. Insights from this study can inform targeted resilience and risk management strategies for rural regions susceptible to extreme weather events.