However, we do know that Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, says if there’s anything that can dramatically change the migration patterns for rural Virginia, it’s remote work.

Lombard, officially the estimates program manager for the Demographic Research Group at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, spoke last week to the Governor’s Summit on Rural Prosperity in Farmville. He used the occasion to deliver some eye-popping numbers.