New Connecticut Data Shows: Increase in Remote Work, Higher Rent Costs, and a Shift in Occupations

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of Connecticut residents in many ways, from introducing many workers to remote work to exacerbating the financial struggles of others. Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that standard 2020 ACS 1-year estimates would not be released, as Covid-19 severely impacted the data collection process and ultimately resulted in estimates that did not meet the Census Bureau’s Statistical Data Quality Standards. The Census Bureau was able to work through data collection challenges this year and released ACS 2021 1-year estimates on September 15, 2022.

In this post, we analyze changes from pre-pandemic (2019 ACS 1-year estimates) to the most recent time frame of data we have (2021 ACS 1-year estimates) to explore the impact of the pandemic on Connecticut residents and workers. Please note that when we mention an increase or decrease in a metric or statistic, we are referring to a statistically significant change. Tables that include MoE columns refer to the Margins of Error. More information on these important concepts can be found in the Notes section at the end of this data story.

Renters Experienced Increases In Monthly Rent Costs

From 2019 to 2021, there was a decrease in vacant housing units, from 9.7% vacant in 2019 to only 7.0% in 2021. During the same time period, householders who own their housing unit increased by 1.6 percentage points from 65.0% to 66.6% (and householders who rent their housing unit decreased by the same number of percentage points).

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

For the 33% of householders who rent their housing unit, there was an increase in the number of households who spent a large portion of their household income on gross rent. This is not surprising, as the median monthly rent increased from $1,117 to $1,277 (not inflation-adjusted), representing a statistically significant increase. As a result, households who spent 35% or more of their household income on gross rent increased by 2.3 percentage points, from 40.6% in 2019 to 42.9% in 2021.

Explore changes in the rent-to-income ratio from 2019 to 2021 in the table below.

Connecticut Workers Shifted Occupations As Unemployment Increased

While there were no significant changes in the proportion of residents in poverty or receiving public assistance (such as SNAP, SSI, and Income Assistance), the unemployment rate increased 1.4 percentage points, from 5.3% in 2019 to 6.7% in 2021. During the same time period, the Connecticut workforce also experienced a change in occupational distribution. Unsurprisingly, the service industry (which includes restaurants and food service) experienced a significant decrease in workers.

Explore changes in the occupations of Connecticut workers from 2019 to 2021 in the table below.

Remote Working In Connecticut Increased By 250% During Covid-19

Photo by Mikey Harris on Unsplash

In 2019, only 1 in 18 workers in Connecticut worked remotely from home. With the emergence of Covid-19, every organization needed to adapt in order to continue business functions. As a result, nearly 1 in 5 workers in Connecticut reported working remotely in 2021, which represented a nearly 14 percentage point increase from 2019. As expected, with so many workers transitioning to a remote work setting, workers who commuted to work in a car, truck, or van dropped from 86% in 2019 to only 74% in 2021.

In addition to an increase in remote working, we observed an increase in the percentage of workers who worked within the state of Connecticut (regardless of where their company is located), from 92.5% in 2019 to 94.1% in 2021. This may have been attributed to the travel restrictions and unwillingness to travel during a global pandemic, as well as the new remote workers who worked in Connecticut for a company outside of Connecticut.

Explore changes in all modes of transportation from 2019 to 2021 in the table below.

Notes

The ACS is a survey of a sample of residents, not all residents. Therefore, ACS estimates have margins of error which provide information about the precision of the estimate. Roughly speaking, we have 90% certainty that the “real” value is around the estimated value plus-or-minus the margin of error. In this blog post, we show the margins of error after each estimate in the tables, and we only discuss differences that are “statistically significant,” meaning that there is sufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the actual difference is different from zero.

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