In the late 1970s both jobs and population were growing more rapidly outside metropolitan areas. As a group, nonmetropolitan counties not adjacent to a metropolitan area experienced a faster rate of employment growth than metropolitan areas between 1975-79. Even in rural counties (no urban place of 2,500 or more) not adjacent to a metropolitan area, the number of manufacturing jobs increased more rapidly than in the metropolitan territory during the same time period. The shift of manufacturing employment toward smaller metropolitan areas or nonmetropolitan areas is somewhat more pronounced in the "industrial heartland" than in the South or West. The effect of employment deconcentration on wage rates in nonmetropolitan counties is difficult to ascertain partly because rapid increases in labor force participation (especially of women) in rural counties have brought many inexperienced workers into the workforce--and this tends to depress measures of average wages or earnings. Family incomes, however, increased greatly in rural counties in the 1970s to the point that family income differences between rural counties and some large cities have been virtually eliminated. Appended are a definitive statement concerning size categories for metropolitan areas and six tables containing basic data. (AH)