The internet and tech related jobs are the best opportunity to work remotely that anyone living in a dying coal town will have.
An online freelancer with a low cost of living can live decently.
An online freelancer with a low cost of living can live decently.
Eastern European and freelancer here. I can do all that freelance work for much cheaper than any American from a dying coal town. Furthermore, we Eastern European freelancers generally tend to be university educated, are used to working in a global cross-cultural marketplace, and we have a large pool of local talent we can subcontract work out to and thus grow our business. Anyone in rural America who now starts trying to make it in freelancing is likely to lose out to us.
On the other hand, one thing we cannot do – due to our foreign passports – is easily move to a large American city. So, I think moving to the cities is a better option for someone in a dying coal town than staying there and hoping for success in the digital economy.
For what it’s worth, I am now a digital nomad. I don’t stay in my country on that salary, I travel among countries that are even cheaper. Someone who intends on staying in their dying coal town in Appalachia does not have that option.
Time zone isn't so important, inasmuch as many freelancers in Europe are happy to adapt to North American hours.
There's no question it can make a meaningful difference near-term. The obvious long-term solution is further urbanization or near-urbanization, convincing people to leave those dying regions for greater opportunity.
Also, this idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15136091
When I call a support line and get "Walter" who is going to help me, I know they are in a different hemisphere and am mostly unsatisfied with talking to them because they are trained with scripts and they talk like robots.
If I called and recognized a Kentucky accent, chances are that person is going to be more relatable and personable than "Walter" from 8 timezones away.
Mr./Mrs. Kentucky might crack a joke and get me to lighten up a little about why XYZ isn't working. If both calls have the same result, I walk away from talking to Mr./Mrs. a little more satisfied than with "Walter".
The same could be said if it was reversed, if someone was calling from the far east and ended up talking with Mr./Mrs. Kentucky it is going to be hard for them to be relatable and personable to someone from the far east.
Call centers insist so much on following scripts that I am not sure there would be opportunities to make jokes even if the person was in the same country as you.
Also, do you think that Americans want to hear a Kentucky accent? I would rather speak to a foreigner than hear someone with a village accent from my country. Those places have a reputation for low education and low culture, and so it is hard for customers to trust any employee with that accent who claims he can help you. I know that call centers have moved to my country and to the Philippines because English speakers in these countries have a more "neutral" accent.
I'd list all the telecommuting job sites, but there seems to be a thousand of them now.
The US median income is about $37,000 per year ($17-$18 per hour). To get beyond ~$13 to ~$17 per hour doing lower skill telecommuting work, you have to have a resume with something meaningful on it.
If you're from Appalachia, it's not difficult to teach yourself any number of skills (from database admin to javascript), go to a local small college to pad your resume with that, get a certification or two if applicable, and then get a job working remote at an entry level tech job that pays considerably better than anything local (few of those jobs exist locally there). A person can go work at a local AT&T or similar store doing sales in an Appalachian town, get some sales experience, and then go apply for a remote sales job making more than they'll get locally. Particularly right now is an ideal time, the US labor market is getting very tight.
I grew up in Appalachia and entirely self-taught my way out of it in the mid 1990s. It was a helluva lot more difficult to do back then. And that process is trivial compared to working in a coal mine, and it's a lot less soul destroying than toiling away for a decade earning $10-$15 at a local Walmart.