America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers

The increase in remote work following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to the impact of the shift away from traditional centralized employment locations in U.S. cities.

One way of gauging the magnitude of this change is through the commuter-adjusted population estimate, which refers to the number of people in a geographic area during normal business hours. This estimate includes residents of an area who do not work and workers who work in an area regardless of whether they live there, and excludes workers who live but do not work in an area.

This analysis uses 2019 and 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates to highlight how the dramatic increase in home-based work during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the population distribution of certain key metros during a typical workday.

The commuter-adjusted population is calculated by adding the people who live in an area to the total number of people working in an area, and then subtracting the total number of people who both live and work in the area.

Continue reading?to learn more about:

• The impact on the most populous metro areas
  • New York-Newark-Jersey City, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania
  • Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California
  • Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin
  • Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas

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America Counts features stories on various topics including:?

• Families,?Housing,?Employment, Business,?Education,?Economy?
• Emergency Management, Health, Population, Income and Poverty

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