Attracting a remote-work population that could live anywhere

Small towns could benefit from the shift to working online

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This week in The Charlotte Ledger, we’re examining changes in the workplace in a series called “The Future of Work”: What will tomorrow’s workplaces look like? What can workers and employers do to prepare? You’re reading Part 4 of 4.

• TUESDAY: Younger workers crave mentoring. They don’t always get it.
• WEDNESDAY: Charlotte’s office market is struggling. ‘There’s going to be pain.’
• THURSDAY: The offices of the future will be packed with amenities
• TODAY: Small towns in N.C. are pushing to lure remote workers

Rocky Mount lost residents after the closure of its historic mill. But like other small towns, the Eastern N.C. city is now attracting ‘people who can widen their radius.’

Rocky Mount’s cotton mill shut down in 1996 and for years was a symbol of blight. Now, it’s a mixed-use development that’s drawing newcomers including Kayla Jacque (shown here with her dog, Penny), a remote worker who was given the option to live anywhere in North Carolina. 

by Cristina Bolling

ROCKY MOUNT — When Kayla Jacque took a remote job last year with a healthcare technology company that supports Veterans Administration hospitals, her employer’s sole residency requirement was that her home base had to be in North Carolina. 

The 27-year-old Massachusetts native picked what might seem like an unlikely landing place: the city of Rocky Mount, population 54,000, which sits about 60 miles east of Raleigh along I-95. 

One of Jacque’s cousins, who also works remotely, had recently moved to a development called Rocky Mount Mills, a massive live-work-play community that had been completed in 2019 on the site of an abandoned cotton mill along the Tar River. She had given it high praise. 

Jacque would be traveling frequently to hospitals in North Carolina and Virginia, and at Rocky Mount Mills, she could pay $1,250 a month for a one-bedroom apartment situated in a historic mill with soaring ceilings, brick walls, windows that overlook the Tar River and room for her 3-year-old golden retriever-labrador mix, Penny. She moved in Feb. 1. 

The national movement toward remote work accelerated during the pandemic, and many small cities like Rocky Mount, where the cost of living is low and accessibility to major highways is high, have set their sights on attracting workers who could settle anywhere. 

The draw of remote workers to North Carolina cities and towns like Rocky Mount is a topic that’s captured the attention of statewide economic development leaders, said Christopher Chung, chief executive officer of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, a nonprofit public-private partnership that works to attract businesses and tourists to the state. 

“I see it as an opportunity for a lot of these towns to attract people who are interested in things like more affordable housing,” good school systems and access to healthcare, Chung said. “All those things that all of us are looking for in a place to live, but there is a subset of people who can widen their radius.” 

Uncovering which towns are drawing the biggest numbers of remote workers is an inexact science that relies more on anecdotal evidence than scientific numbers, Chung said. 

“It’s hard to know who these remote workers are,” he said.

About 35% of people with jobs that can be done remotely are working from home all of the time, according to a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year. Many expect that number to grow. 

Unlike booming urban areas like Charlotte and the Triangle, Rocky Mount’s population has long been in decline. Between 2010 and 2020 — a decade in which Charlotte gained more than 140,000 residents — Rocky Mount lost about 3,000 residents.  

But there are signs new arrivals could reverse that trend. Nash County, where Rocky Mount is located, saw 1,346 people move in between 2020 and 2022, according to data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey.