The Decision To Travel To Work During The Pandemic Was Both Racialized And Politicized

Post by Professor Ryan Lamare, Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound effect on labor markets, communities, businesses, and workers, starting with lockdown in 2020 and continuing for several years. It was immediately apparent that the Covid-19 pandemic affected workers and communities in very different ways.

While some were forced to stay home during lockdown, others, such as workers in US counties with the largest Black populations, felt compelled to continue traveling to work, potentially exposing themselves to far greater health risks.

My latest research, published in the Industrial & Labor Relations Review, provides a unique and empirical picture of travel patterns at key points during the pandemic.

My co-researchers and I used Google Mobility Reports data, which covers nearly 90% of all US counties, to uncover variations in who was able to stay home during lockdown and who was compelled (or simply chose) to keep working, therefore exposing themselves to disease risk. As the pandemic unfolded, Google took advantage of the data it collects on users’ mobile devices to track changes in mobility patterns relative to a pre-pandemic baseline. Google tracks individual mobile phone users’ movements to work and non-workplaces and we aggregated this to county level, which we linked with county-level Census and other data.

We supported the county-level data with novel individual-level survey data drawn from workers in two states.

We found that Black workers were relatively more likely to feel compelled to travel to workplaces during lockdown (but probably did so against their will) whereas Trump voters were relatively more likely to go about their usual routines, whether traveling to work or to other places, during lockdown.

Putting this into context, in a county like Ouray County, Colorado, where only 0.1% of the population is Black, mobility to workplaces during lockdown dropped by over 25% in the height of the pandemic, compared to the county’s pre-pandemic travel trends. In contrast, in a county like Claiborne County, Mississippi, where 86% of the population is Black, workplace mobility fell by only 18% compared to its pre-pandemic baseline. These are meaningful effects showing a nearly 30% increase in workplace mobility patterns between counties with low and high respective rates of Black populations.

This effect persists even after accounting for other factors that might shape workplace mobility, such as state-level pandemic policies, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the county, differences in occupational makeup of the population, and the county’s political leanings.

Structural racism

Our findings speak to wider concerns around the unequal treatment of Black workers in the US and the unfairness of vulnerable communities being tasked with being exposed to huge personal risk to keep the economy going.

The racialized difference in workplace mobility between Ouray County and Claiborne County, for example, was not present for other types of mobility during lockdown, such as trips to grocery stores, restaurants, or retail establishments. Black communities showed no difference in mobility patterns to non-work locations, indicating that they felt compelled to keep going to work and put their own safety at risk when they would have preferred to stay home like others.

These findings may help explain the uneven health outcomes of the pandemic. We know that as COVID spread in 2020, reports quickly emerged that Black populations were anywhere from two to three times more likely to catch the virus. Black counties also suffered from far greater mortality rates during lockdown than did other racial groups, with several reporting Black individuals accounted for 60 to 70% of all COVID deaths.

Responses to the pandemic also polarized on political lines

In contrast, anti-science skepticism among many Republican voters, was amplified by President Trump and led by those in partisan Trump counties, downplaying the severity of Covid-19. Many Trump supporters argued that they should be allowed to continue traveling both to their jobs and to non-workplaces.

My research shows that in a county like Prince George’s County, Maryland, for example, where Trump received less than 10% of the vote in 2016, there was about a 31% decrease in workplace travel during lockdown, whereas in Wheeler County, Texas, where 92% of the population voted for Trump, employees were about 10 percentage points more likely to travel to work compared to low Trump-voting areas.

And, unlike what was seen for Black communities, Trump-voting areas also had uniformly higher rates of mobility to non-work areas as well, such as grocery stores, restaurants, and retail establishments. This implies that Trump voters simply did not want to stay home as much as non-Trump voting areas, willingly exposing themselves to a disease they did not believe was particularly severe.

Diversity as part of a ‘culture war’

Of course, we all want to move on from Covid, but we must learn lessons from it otherwise the same inequalities will play out again and again.

States and counties must support and encourage diversity initiatives within their communities and stop treating diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of a political ‘culture war’. It is important to recall that the mobility patterns that compelled Black workers to continue heading to work at the height of the pandemic occurred during a time of heightened racial awareness following the George Floyd protests, when companies were actively seeking to engender more awareness of structural racism. In response to recent culture wars over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, many companies have taken steps back from embracing and acknowledging diversity issues at work, which could only serve to amplify the structural pressures on Black workers if another crisis like the pandemic unfolds in the future.

There is some hope of change, however. If states and counties created policies that ensured compliance with anti-discrimination laws and more strongly regulated equity in workplaces, this could create appropriate structures to lead Black workers to be less likely to feel that they might need to work during a crisis like a pandemic when others feel more comfortable staying at home.