Lawmakers and Nonprofits Step Up to Close Rural Digital Divide

Nonprofits and federal and state lawmakers are waking up to the fact that access to the Internet is key to building healthy economies, and that both have a critical role to play in closing the digital divide that particularly plagues rural areas. When looking at middle-skill jobs, those that require some post-high-school training but not a four-year degree, nearly eight in 10, representing 32 percent of all labor market demand in the nation, require digital skills. Those digitally intensive middle-skill jobs have grown more than twice as fast as the other kind, and pay about 18 percent more.