Tiny town seeking professional. Competitive salary. Housing included.
When a community is in the later stages of population collapse it is often unable to find skilled labor for critical roles. They are forced to spend more of their limited resources recruiting qualified people.
The tiny Spanish village of Arenillas is one such example. It is home to just 40 people and is seeking a stonemason with a family. The job offer comes with free housing and ownership of the local bar. The job posting has been reasonably successful - the mayor says she has received upwards of 300 emails a day - but most applicants lack the skillset necessary to work in the historic Spanish town. Notably, Spain (perhaps realizing the severity of their condition) has bucked the broader European trend against migration, recently approving a plan to legalize half a million undocumented migrants.
Likewise, the town of Julia Creek in Queensland was trying to recruit a new general practice physician by offering a AU$680,000 ($428,000) salary, free rent, and a car. Julia Creek is also remote - it is a 7 hour drive to the nearest major city (Townsville) and a 17 hour drive to Brisbane. (The job has been filled.)
What should we make of these efforts? They are an attempt to counteract the broader trend of migration out of rural areas, into bigger cities.
Migration to needy rural communities offers the opportunity to perform a sort of geographic arbitrage - and allows individuals to take their skills to a "market" where it is more remunerative. (Also of note, birthrates in rural communities tend to be a bit higher than in urban areas. There are a variety of social, economic, and cultural reasons for this, but one imagines that it is ultimately easier for a couple to buy a home and start a family outside a major city). There are many people of my generation who have been disillusioned with their inability to meet "adult" milestones (specifically, homeownership) and some have gone so far as to hope for a "great [economic] reset" which will deflate pricing enough to make these things attainable. (Be careful what you wish for.) Simply moving to a new place might be the next best thing.
However, there are usually several reasons why these rural communities struggle to attract new residents or retain their youth. (Despite higher birthrates, rural areas have a higher rate of youth emigration, and the net effect is population decline.) Rural communities lack the infrastructure and amenities of their urban counterparts; certain endeavors can only survive when there is a critical mass of customers in the community. This is particularly true for the arts, but it can manifest in other industries as well. For example, a close family member of mine has coeliac disease (an allergy to gluten). Coeliac disease isn't common but there are many more coeliac patients on New York City than there are in the town where she grew up. Therefore she loves visiting New York because its population and density (20 million in the metro area) can support many gluten-free bakeries.
Rural communities are often very homogenous and can be insular in a way that is not welcoming to newcomers, especially if these newcomers are immigrants or from a domestic minority culture (as is often the case for healthcare professionals worldwide). And then there's the "two body problem:" today's professionals (like physicians) tend to marry other professionals - and while there might be opportunity for one half of such a couple, the other partner may be forced to give up his or her career.
I think the movement of people and wealth out of rural areas and into cities is an example of market failure -- individuals' rational choices produce suboptimal outcomes for society. It's the type of phenomenon which might require intervention to prevent broad depopulation. Young people will have to be encouraged to migrate to less-populated, lower cost-of-living areas in order to move forward in life, and rural communities will have to accept a certain number of domestic and international migrants in order to ensure their own survival. Governments can facilitate this by investing in rural infrastructure and encouraging remote work.