The small cities nobody writes about

The large cities absorb the attention and hold a minority of the population. The country is mostly towns, and the economics of a town of fifty thousand people is a distinct subject.

The structure

Frequently one large employer — a processing plant, a machine works, a mine, a chemical facility — around which everything else is arranged. The single-employer town is a common form here and its risk profile is obvious: the town is as healthy as one company.

Then public employment: school, hospital, municipality, utilities. In many towns this is the largest employer collectively and it is stable, which matters more than it sounds.

Then retail and services, which scale with the first two.

What decentralisation did

Gave the town a share of income tax and control over its own capital spending, which for a competent administration meant repaired schools, resurfaced streets and a renovated central square within a few years.

The variation between towns with the same budget and different administrations is the most striking thing decentralisation revealed.

What determines whether people stay

A job paying enough to make staying rational. A school worth sending a child to. And, increasingly, an internet connection good enough to work remotely, which has quietly become the most important single variable for educated young people in small towns.

Why a business should look

Labour is available, costs are a fraction of the capital, municipalities are actively helpful because they need employers, and premises are cheap. The constraint is finding the skills, and that is solvable with a training arrangement.

Towns of thirty to a hundred thousand make up most of my customer list, and it is odd that almost nothing is written about them. Doing business there has its own economics: one large employer, a handful of suppliers, a market where everyone knows everyone. The country's real average is not Kyiv but these towns.