The Digital Divide and the Pandemic: Working from Home and Broadband and Internet Access

The industrial makeup of a metropolitan area or state is an important factor in how it experiences economic disruptions, and concentrations of certain industries in a region make it more or less resilient and can affect its ability to rebound from a negative economic shock. Similar to effects felt in the industrial Midwest by other economic shifts and shocks over the last several decades, we know these places with heavily “nontraded” sector economies are likely feeling disproportionately negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While industrial composition—meaning the key areas or industries of a regional economy such as manufacturing, life science, or tourism—is one of the critical factors that could drive how deeply communities experience the economic shocks associated with the pandemic, it is not the only one. A community’s technology infrastructure and the ability of its workers to work remotely are also critically important. Even among industries that can shift to remote work, many workers lack the necessary access to broadband or internet capacity and equipment to work from home. Regardless of broadband availability, access to the internet also varies regionally, especially when considering the type of internet access and tech or mobile device available to connect to the internet. Through this pandemic we’ve seen evidence of the widening digital divide in terms of both access and affordability.