A business note.

Now, according to the Pew Research Center, 22 million or 14% of employed adults are remote workers through the help of a platform called Make My Move.

Several Kentucky communities are hoping to lure those workers with the promise of cash, culture and natural beauty.

Kentucky Edition caught up with advocates of the program from Central and eastern Kentucky to learn more about how bringing in new remote workers benefits their communities.

Make My Move.

As an online marketplace, we connect remote workers and other people that are looking for a new community with places across the country that are trying to attract new residents.

If you look at the data, right since like 1980, our distressed counties are economically distressed.

So our counties that are in most need, they've lost about 10% of their overall population.

Forward looking projections, they don't look great either.

Communities that really don't have anybody any any margin left to lose that they upwards of 40% more of their of their population may be gone by 2050.

So it was that that kind of sparked this idea of equi remote, which is an attempt to bring new people into the region, folks that in a post-COVID world have the ability to live and work wherever they want to.

So why should we not put ourselves out there to try to get them to come to what we know is one of the most beautiful places in the country?

From a big picture, economic impact.

Now, this isn't a strategy.

The strategy that's going to replace advanced manufacturing or industrial jobs or landing a thousand person employer.

But what we're trying to do is plant seeds and do the incremental type, small scale economic development with this program.

Typically, these folks are in kind of white collar jobs.

There's a lot of engineers, sales people, marketers.

If you can do your job at a desk, you can do your job at a desk anywhere.

And so we see really a wide spectrum of people in all different industries and professions.

What all economic development experts are telling us in the field is that regionalism is the way to go.

Consumers don't recognize county boundaries.

We know we have to be concerned with that for growing our occupational tax base.

But we're really selling this region.

Greater Lexington, The Bluegrass Region.

Horse Farms.

Great outdoor canoeing and kayaking.

Bourbon Trail, Gorgeous, gorgeous vistas, views.

So we've got a lot going on in Greater Lexington, and this remote strategy is an important part of that.

The biggest piece and what we see in the applications, because we asked people why Eastern Kentucky know, why are you interested in moving here?

They talk about the things that we already know, right.

But maybe we just don't know enough or we take for granted the scenery, the change of colors, the outdoor recreation, the small town fill, the safety right, living in safe places.

Great school systems.

They mention one in their kids to grow up in an environment where they know who their neighbors are.

This has grown into really a regional project at this point.

We've had 3700 total applications.

We've successfully moved 12 households to eight counties, and those 12 households represent about 35 total people.

The average income is about $92,000 per individual household.

It is a little bit above that based on what our numbers show us.

It's about an average annual ROI or economic impact of just under $875,000.

The pilot program includes five families to to move.

We have moved three families already, and so we have two more spots open for those who may be interested.

We hope that our elected officials will see the benefit of this program and want to continue investing.

Make My Move program is currently active in eight Kentucky counties with an additional 27 planning to come aboard.