Latest Census estimates show how COVID changed where Whatcom County is working
Not surprisingly, the number of Whatcom County residents working primarily from home more than doubled during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Census Bureau data released earlier this month shows.
Approximately 16.8% of Whatcom County’s 109,681 workers 16 years and older in 2021 worked from home, according to the latest American Community Survey estimates. That percentage is up from 8.2% in 2019.
The overall number of workers 16 and older increased about 3% from the 106,418 in 2019 estimates. Most of the county’s workforce growth was among women, who saw a 5.9% bump in workers 16 and older between 2019 and 2021, compared to men increasing 0.6%, Census estimates showed, though men still account for 52% of Whatcom’s workforce.
Estimates were not released in 2020 due to difficulties created by the pandemic.
Though Whatcom residents are working from home in larger numbers than they were two years ago, Census estimates show Whatcom’s rate actually grew much slower than the rest of the nation.
According to a Sept. 15 news release accompanying the latest American Community Survey, the number of people working primarily from home in 2021 in the U.S. tripled from 5.7% (roughly 9 million people) in 2019 to 17.9% (or 27.6 million people) in 2021.
Washington state has the second highest work-from-home rate (24.2%) in the nation, according to the release, behind only Washington, D.C., (48.3%).
“Work and commuting are central to American life, so the widespread adoption of working from home is a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Census Bureau’s Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch statistician Michael Burrows said in the release. “With the number of people who primarily work from home tripling over just a two-year period, the pandemic has very strongly impacted the commuting landscape in the United States.”
The growth Whatcom County saw is actually a continuation of a trend that started before the pandemic’s onset, as having 8.2% of its workforce working from home in 2019 was already up from 5% in 2016, estimates show.
With more people working from the home office, Whatcom County’s estimated mean travel time to work also dropped nearly two minutes from 23.1 minutes in 2019 to 21.3 minutes last year, according to Census data.
