Andy Hasselbring thought he was being scammed.
For years, he and his family lived in an apartment overlooking the ocean in Malibu, California. Now, they wanted to move somewhere within five hours of Nashville, Tennessee, where Hasselbring’s parents had recently moved.
Finding a job wasn’t a concern. Hasselbring works remotely as an editor, author and playwright. His wife, Rachel, had just landed a job at a university that allowed her to work from home.
That led them to make an offer last year on a house in Jasper. The town of about 17,000 is located in Dubois County and surrounded by rolling hills. It’s just a half-hour drive from Patoka Lake, the second-largest reservoir in the state.
Hasselbring reached out to local officials to learn more about the town before putting in an offer on a house. Within hours, Dubois Strong, the county’s economic development organization, responded with detailed answers to all his questions.
Dubois Strong even offered the family $5,000 and a free state-park pass if they agreed to live there for two years. Hasselbring was so stunned by the city’s enthusiasm that it made him suspicious.
“At first I kind of thought it was a scam because they were just so helpful,” he said. “I assumed there must have been some kind of trick at the end that was going to bite me.”
There was no trick and the incentive wasn’t a scam.
Jasper is using its hospitality and money to woo well-paid remote workers like Hasselbring and his family to move there, according to Ed Cole, president of Dubois Strong. In fact, since the pandemic, the city has launched a full-out campaign to attract such workers to the rural community, which has struggled to find new residents.
Jasper is far from alone. As remote work takes hold around the nation following the pandemic, towns and cities across Indiana are fighting hard to take advantage of the new breed of free-agent workers looking to move somewhere new.
And more than anywhere else, rural communities see the trend as the silver bullet that could create a new path to prosperity and stop the population bleed drying up the local economy. The state has 41 rural counties and 33 others are considered a mix of rural and metro areas, according to the Purdue Center for Regional Development.
The 2020 census showed that 49 of Indiana’s 92 counties lost population over the last decade, including most mid-sized and rural communities. Meanwhile, many Indiana metro areas continue to grow.
That’s why attracting remote workers like Hasselbring to move to Jasper has become the new bullseye on the Dubois County’s economic dart board.
“This trend is a big one,” Cole said. “What it really comes down to is people and workforce talent, and now we are competing all over the state and in the Midwest for those people.”
‘IT BLOWS MY MIND’
The numbers tell the story.
Just over 322,000 Hoosiers reported working from home full time in April. An additional 335,500 worked remotely one to four days a week, according to a monthly Household Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
That’s more people working from home either full or part time than those who reported working in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation and warehousing combined during the same period. The number represents about 21% of the 3.15 million Hoosier who responded to the survey.
Those numbers are projected to grow as more college graduates are prioritizing, even above salary, work-from-home jobs.
Nearly 70% of recent grads are somewhat or extremely likely to consider a job that is entirely remote, according to a survey of 1,000 students conducted by Velocity Global, a workforce-talent platform. Eighty percent of students said they would consider taking less money for their job if it allowed a remote option.
In Indiana, nearly 75% of workers with a bachelor’s degree reported working remotely full or part time in January, according to the U.S. Census survey. Nationally, 35% of all U.S. employees in 2022 had the chance to work remotely full time, according to a McKinsey and Company study. That’s up from just over 5% in 2018.
The exponential growth of remote work is almost unbelievable, said Michael Hicks, an economics and business professor at Ball State University. The numbers are so staggering that Hicks considers the shift to remote work to be the most revolutionary trend to reshape the state’s economy since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s.
“It just blows my mind,” he said. “But it’s true.”
Now, rural towns and cities are adapting to the trend.
Although communities still battle to land new factories and businesses, the real focus has shifted to attracting new residents to grow their population and economy. Rather than chasing smokestacks, communities are competing to have the nicest trails, the best schools, the coolest brewpub or the most vibrant downtown to attract remote workers.
Those quality-of-life features are more important following the pandemic and have been directly linked to helping increase both business and population growth, according to a study published in September by Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research.
The findings confirm that improvements in quality of life attract people and jobs not just in large urban centers, but rural rural areas as well, the study reported.
“There’s a significant effect of quality of life on where people go, and then accordingly where businesses go,” Hicks said. “Because businesses follow people, not the other way around.”
THE RACE IS ON
Ask Greensburg Mayor Joshua Marsh about why the city, which is located an hour southeast of Indianapolis, is a great place to live, and you won’t hear a word about the job market.
Instead, he’ll tell you the community of 11,500 residents is safe and affordable. It has stellar schools, and it’s only an hour to get to world-class symphonies and airports in Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
Greensburg has embraced the quality-of-life approach because the new remote-workforce economy demands it, Marsh said. The idea of competing with other cities to land those workers, he added, is very real.
Not only is Greensburg offering $5,000 to those who relocate there. It also has a program called Grandparents on Demand, where local residents volunteer to adopt a new remote-worker family, babysit their kids and attend events with them. Neighbors also reach out to invite new residents to semi-monthly dinner parties.
The incentives are offered through a new online platform called MakeMyMove, an Indianapolis-based company targeting workers with higher coastal salaries looking to leave major metropolitan areas.
Co-founder Evan Hock said Greensburg’s unique approach to drawing remote workers has prompted more than 3,000 out-of-state workers to apply for the 11 available spots through program.
“It’s one thing to say you’re a welcoming community,” Hock said. “It’s another thing to show it. And they’ve really kind of rolled out the red carpet, and that’s apparent in their applications.”
Mayor Marsh said Greensburg is simply adapting its economic development approach to the new reality of remote work.
“For years, communities have chased smokestacks to create jobs” he said. “Now, we chase people to fill our communities and provide a quality of life that is attractive to those who have the ability to live and work anywhere.”
THE STRUGGLE IS REAL
Stay-at-home orders and social-distancing requirements issued during the pandemic made many city-dwellers long for more living room and outdoor space.
In a recent survey conducted by Paulsen, an Idaho-based marketing agency for rural industries, over half of respondents living in urban areas said the ability to work from home made them consider a rural move.
And rural space is something Indiana has in abundance, said Kerry Thomson, executive director of Indiana University’s Center for Rural Engagement.
“The advantages of living in spaces that were less packed with people became clear during the pandemic,” Thomson said. “Many people started looking for places where they could really enjoy the natural elements of a community and being outdoors and enjoy a different pace of life.”
That’s the sales pitch made by most rural communities looking for remote workers. The pandemic helped that pitch, but it’s still no easy task convincing stay-at-home employees that their community is better than the next one an hour down the road.
For rural areas like Greensburg that have invested heavily in quality-of-life initiatives, attracting remote workers is turning out to be a significant economic boost. On the flip side, communities that have ignored quality-of-life projects will be left in the economic dust as more jobs become remote, Hicks argued.
“It can be a boon or a bane,” the Ball State economist said. “There are some that are going to struggle enormously in the decades to come because they don’t have things that these sorts of people would like.”
That means the divide between the haves and have-nots in rural Indiana will only deepen, leading to more regional economic inequality, Hicks explained.
“I think what we’re going to see is a lot of people leaving low-quality-of-life places because they have so many more options,” he said. “With remote work, they don’t have to be in a low-quality-of-life place to get the job. There’s no reason for people to stay.”
Hasselbring and his family had plenty of reasons to love Malibu — the beaches, the weather, the cool urban vibe. But all of that came with a crushingly high cost of living, including a $5-million average home listing price, and an unattractive crime rate.
Jasper was the opposite: safe, laid-back, friendly. The median listing price for a house there is $239,000, according to realtor.com. Hasselbring said all of that was attractive, but what ultimately hooked the family on moving to Jasper was the people.
“The first day I was here, a neighbor comes over and says, ‘So glad you’re here. Can I mow your lawn for you?’ ” he recounted. “I mean, it’s just the sweetest thing. We felt at home the very first day we were here.”