“Seems like everything is moving to Boise or Twin Falls,” said Janice Jacobson, 56, the manager of<br />the King’s discount store in Gooding, a town of about 3,500 people 45 minutes from Twin Falls.<br />Rows of closed downtown stores in nearby places like Buhl stand in sharp contrast to Main Avenue in<br />Twin Falls, where businesses like the Twin Falls Sandwich Company are packed with hungry customers.<br />In such a brutal calculus, economists and local politicians said, little things add up fast: like being close enough to a big city,<br />but not so close as to be crushed by the competition; having good access by air and highway for passengers and freight; and then having enough trained workers if and when new companies knock on the door.<br />Twin Falls, population 47,000, is a place where rows of hay and feed corn brush right up against the edge of town,<br />but it’s also the biggest community for a hundred miles in any direction, which makes it a shopping hub.<br />An Idaho Town Bucks the Perception of Rural Struggle -<br />By KIRK JOHNSONAPRIL 3, 2017<br />TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Lost jobs, empty storefronts and shrinking populations.<br />In the nine-county south-central region of Idaho anchored by Twin Falls, unemployment<br />is 3.2 percent — lower than booming Seattle or Idaho’s biggest city, Boise.<br />From 2000 to 2015, Twin Falls County’s population increased by almost 25 percent — twice as fast as the nation’s.<br />Shawn Barigar, the mayor of Twin Falls, said his community could not afford to lose any workers.
