Essential work, unequal places: Neighborhood characteristics of the essential workforce in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 55 million U.S. workers continued providing “essential” services crucial to public health, safety, and economic stability, even as large segments of the workforce sheltered at home. Despite the central role these workers played in safeguarding the economy and the greater American public, little is known about the neighborhood environments in which essential workers lived and how well these communities were equipped to support the health and well-being of essential workers during the pandemic. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to describe the social and physical characteristics of U.S. neighborhoods with varying concentrations of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We linked data from the National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA) with American Community Survey (ACS) 2016–2020 estimates to identify the residential concentration of essential workers across U.S. census tracts. Neighborhoods were categorized into quintiles based on the proportion of essential workers. We examined access to key neighborhood resources relevant to pandemic resilience, including food outlets, health care facilities, and parks/green space. We summarized characteristics using descriptive statistics and heatmaps. Differences between the highest (Q5) and lowest (Q1) quintiles were assessed using Welch’s two-sample t-tests. Results Neighborhoods with higher concentrations of essential workers had greater access to grocery stores but significantly less access to health care facilities and parks/green space compared with neighborhoods with fewer essential workers. These disparities highlight uneven community support for those workers required to continue in-person work during a national public health emergency. Conclusion Using nationwide neighborhood and census-tract data, we found that neighborhoods with a high proportion of essential workers generally had better access to food stores but substantially lower access to health care and parks/green space. Recognizing these uneven community conditions is critical for strengthening preparedness efforts and ensuring that neighborhoods are better equipped to support the essential workforce during future disasters and public health crises.