Symposium on Rural Labor Markets Research Issues (Washington, D.C., October 17-18, 1985).

This report contains five papers with discussions identifying policy and research issues in rural labor markets, assessing the adequacy of existing data and theories for researching these issues, and assigning priorities to research questions. The papers focus on rural economic goals, market linkages with metropolitan, national, and international economies, and the federal government's role in rural labor markets. A paper on rural labor market performance considers successes/failures of government intervention in altering labor market performance and asserts that underemployment is the appropriate indicator of labor market performance in rural areas. Another paper traces implications of industrial and occupational restructuring, finding substantial inequalities between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan labor markets and between males and females within those markets. A third paper reviews usefulness of regional growth and industrial location theories for understanding uneven distribution of growth across rural labor markets. A fourth paper examines linkages between local labor markets and the national/international economy and a fifth reviews ways in which government interventions work at cross purposes in rural labor markets. A summary chapter emphasizes diversity, measurement issues, complexity of affecting forces, and research/policy implications of local labor markets. Tables and figures accompany the papers. A participant list is included. (LFL)