Rural-urban differences in the labor-force impacts of COVID-19 in the United States

Abstract

Covid-19 has had dramatic impacts on economic outcomes across the United States. Up to now, most research on the pandemic has had a national or urban focus due to a lack of high-quality secondary data on the impacts among rural people. We overcome this barrier using new data from the Current Population Survey to compare economic outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic between urban and rural areas of the United States. Using monthly data from May to November of 2020, we find the pandemic has generally had a more severe economic impact on urban individuals than on their rural counterparts. Urban Americans were more likely to be unable to work and be unable to look for work due to Covid-19. They were also less likely than rural Americans to be paid for hours not worked. However, rural workers were less likely to be able to work remotely than urban workers. While the occurrence of negative outcomes diminished for both groups over time, important differences persisted. Finally, when adjusting estimates for demographic characteristics, we find all documented differences persist, suggesting disparities in the Covid-19 experience between urban and rural America cannot simply be explained due to well-known differences in demographic composition.