The economic structure and demographic characteristics of rural counties vary significantly across the country. To provide information about this variation to policymakers, public officials, and researchers, USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) has developed a set of county-level typology codes.
The 2025 edition of the USDA, ERS County Typology Codes contains a set of Economic Typology Codes based on the industrial composition of nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) counties and a set of Demographic Typology Codes based on demographic characteristics that are often of interest to rural policymakers and researchers.
Two types of Economic Typology Codes are available. The ‘High Industry Concentration’ Economic Typology Codes indicate if a county has a high share of earnings or jobs in farming, mining, manufacturing, Federal and State Government, or recreation relative to other counties. These five codes are not mutually exclusive, that is, a county may have a high industry concentration in more than one sector. These codes indicate the prevalence of a particular industry independent of other industries.
The mutually exclusive ‘Industry Dependence’ Economic Typology Code is a single code that indicates if any of the industries examined have a high combined share of earnings and jobs, and which industry is the most prevalent in a county relative to the other industries. This code is more reflective of nonmetro counties’ industrial structures. The code also identifies relatively more manufacturing dependent counties and relatively fewer farming, mining, government, and recreation dependent counties than the High Industry Concentration Codes. This code indicates which of the five industries is the most dominant in a county.
The six Demographic Typology Codes (not mutually exclusive) are low post-secondary education, low employment, population loss, housing stress, retirement destination, and persistent poverty.
ERS has produced and updated its County Typology Codes roughly every decade since the 1980s. Different vintages of the typology codes are not directly comparable because of methodological changes but offer insight into the economic conditions and topics of interest in rural America at different points in time. Previously released versions of the codes and methodologies are available in the files below.
The 2025 ERS County Typology Codes classify all counties in the 50 U.S. States and Washington, D.C. for which data are available. County-equivalents in U.S. territories are not classified due to limited data availability.
This research was conducted with restricted access to U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. The views expressed here are those of ERS and do not reflect the views of BLS.