Mount Hope Ohio–At age 32, Ryan Hershberger has achieved a success far beyond his modest Amish roots.
He launched a furniture business with two cousins a decade ago and now owns a company that distributes solid wood tables and chairs nationwide. From a second floor corner office, he presides over the 65,000 square-foot factory floor where dozens of workers assemble the furniture.
One is his dad Lyman Hershberger, 67, a carpenter who expresses pride over his son‘s rise. “He’s a go-getter “he said. “And that’s what it takes.” Ryan Hershberger lives and works in Holmes County Ohio, America’s example for economic mobility by one measure.
Millennials there are doing better than the generation ahead of them. Most young people across the nation are contending with crushing housing costs, and staggering student loan debt. But something different has been happening in the rolling green hills of Holmes County, though.
Between 2005 and 2019, average household income in Holmes County Rose 24% for 27-year-olds raised in lower income homes. From roughly $36,000 to $45,000.
That puts Holmes County millennials who are in their early 30s far ahead of their Gen X counterparts when they were that age.
Big Gains
Holmes County had the biggest relative jump for any U.S. county, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Raj Shetty, a Harvard economist and his fellow researchers used itemized census and tax data to follow millions of Americans from childhood adulthood. Their aim is to better understand the economic mobility – ability to move up the income ladder. Holmes county isn’t a wealthy place. Median household income is about $73,000, near the roughly 75,000 median for the United States census figures show. But its status as an economic mobility darling is notable, because by some standards, it should be struggling.
It sits far from any interstates and lacks urban centers. Roughly half of its 44,000 residents are Amish, part of a Christian community that eschews varying degrees of modern technology. And because Amish children only go to the 8th grade in school, the county’s educational attainment among 25-year-olds ranks last in Ohio.
Economists and local business leaders believe much of the progress stems from the entrepreneurial growth, fueled by cooperation and innovation, and tight family and community ties. Mark Partridge, an Ohio State University economist who has studied Holmes County, points to a networking effect where companies and cousins routinely help each other out. While other counties can’t necessarily replicate this community climate, they can draw on key ingredients Partridge said. You don’t have to be Amish to have a tight social network with effective social organizations, he said.
While rural areas are often hampered by young talent moving away for better job opportunities, many Holmes County children remain, anchored in place by the Amish tradition of staying near one’s community. Job growth helps too. A third of workers employed in Holmes County commute from elsewhere, Partridge said. Community ties underpin Holmes counties economy.
Steve Miller 31, started Grand Design Roofing in his 20s with a partner. His business is robust enough to sometimes overextend him and his six workers. “If we’ve got plenty of jobs, I just go to my competitor and I give him a couple of jobs” said Miller, who is Amish. “ I’m here to solve people’s problems, and my employees can make a good honest living at it. I’m not here to collect all the wealth I can collect.”
Leaving the Farm
The counties rising prosperity is rooted in a broad shift from agriculture to small scale manufacturing that began decades ago. As falling milk prices made dairy farming in increasingly untenable, many families sought new ways to earn a living said Marcus Yoder, who directs the local, Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center. When they moved off the farms, many of them established small businesses that grew. And these young people in their early 30s are riding the wave of that growth in a tremendous way, he said.
Chris Keim, 31, grew up poor on a 95 acre Holmes County dairy farm. His father worked at a sawmill for extra income. Keim, who is Amish, didn’t see farming as viable anymore and had a series of manual labor jobs upon leaving school after the eighth grade. He spent most of his 20s in the furniture business. A few years ago an uncle hired him for sales and marketing at his outdoor furniture business, which began as a pumpkin stand, and now mostly sells locally made items. The vast Kaufman lawn furniture showroom where Keim works today was—until a few years ago—a hayfield, one of many local fields paved over for commerce. This year Keim expects to make around $120,000, more than double his 61 year-old father‘s current pay at a lumber company. Keim and his wife own five rental homes and recently sold several others to finance their second adoption, he said. “We believe that God has given us everything that we have, and we are going to make the most of every opportunity” he added.
Factories and a Cafe
Since 2014, the Holmes County economic development council, a private and public funded nonprofit, has supported 38 construction or expansion projects totaling more than $160 million in capital investment, said executive Director Martin Leninger. Those projects have yielded more than 11,000 new full-time jobs paying about $54,000 on average.
During a tour in Leninger‘s pickup truck, he pointed out several factories that have sprouted up. “It’s crazy how much growth has taken place in the last 10 years”, Leninger said. As we drove, his truck passed Café, Chrysalis. Crystal Bontregger, 30 opened this delightful café in 2022, and has expanded to 3000 ft² and a staff of 17.
“Work ethic has been very much taught and kind of drilled into us at a young age” she said. One of her childhood chores was washing clothes with a hand wringer. Raised Amish, she was influenced by entrepreneurs like her late father, who ran an excavating business. The café isn’t making her rich, she said, but sales are steady, and most of all, fulfilling.
Many young people in America are now rethinking the old “You-have-to-go-to-college” paradigm and considering starting their own businesses or working with their hands. They should. Rising tuition costs and crippling student debt can often create financial strain for graduates, making it difficult to achieve economic stability.
Young people are learning that certain career paths do not require a college degree, and some individuals are be better suited to vocational training or apprenticeship programs, especially in an age where fewer and fewer young people have a skill or know how to work with their hands. There is a huge opportunity here, and the Amish are meeting that challenge well. You can too.
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“Make it your goal to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you” (1 Thessalonians 4:11).