The Uneven Workplace Recovery from COVID-19:
Bay Area versus Central Valley

Ellie McKinney, Ina Morton, and Seva Rodnyansky at Occidental College

• Weekday workplace activity reduction from COVID-19 was more drastic in Bay Area than in the Central Valley.
• Weekend workplace activity has recovered much faster than weekday workplace activity in both Bay Area and Central Valley.
• Job losses were immense in close-contact industries in the Bay Area, despite high rates of telecommuting in the Bay Area among white collar workers. For example, over half of workers in hospitality and leisure lost their jobs.

As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, it is becoming increasingly evident that communities have not experienced the economic impacts of the pandemic equally. Google’s Community Mobility Reports dataset reveals several notable economic consequences of COVID-19 based on the movement of individuals to and from their workplaces. The data measure mobility as a percent change compared to a baseline time period, calculated as the median value from the 5‑week period Jan 3 – Feb 6, 2020.

This analysis specifically considers the differences in workplace activity between two adjacent regions in California: the Bay Area and the Central Valley (as defined on our home page) from before the pandemic began in the U.S. (March 2020) to 1 year later (March 2021). The analysis uncovered two main trends that stood out:

1. Bay Area counties saw more drastic decreases in weekday workplace activity compared to the Central Valley.
2. Both regions saw more rapid recovery in weekend workplace activity compared to weekday activity.

These findings illuminate the economic divergences between the two Northern California regions and their laborers’ experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing these differences can potentially help facilitate the development of more comprehensive and strategic approaches for more equitable economic recovery in a post-COVID 19 world.

Seeing the Data: Weekday Workdays

Immediately following the start of the pandemic, the charts below show a much more drastic decrease in weekday workplace activity across the Bay Area compared to the Central Valley region. Additionally, workplace activity has remained consistent throughout the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The charts reveal several findings:

• The Bay Area saw a maximum average initial workplace activity drop of close to 64% compared to the Central Valley which experienced a decline of 44% during the first two weeks of the pandemic in March of 2020 (March 15th – March 31st).
  • The 20% difference in weekday workplace activity between the two regions has remained consistent throughout the pandemic.
  • In March of 2021 (15th – 31st), the mean percent change across the Bay Area was 55% compared to a 34% decrease in the Central Valley.
• While there has been some recovery in both regions over the last year, following the initial decrease in activity, workplace activity has remained consistently low with minimal recovery.
  • In the Bay Area, weekday workplace activity has remained on average between 50 and 70% lower than the baseline measure throughout the pandemic.
  • This was also true in the Central Valley, however the degree of activity decline was less substantial than in the Bay Area. In the Central Valley, weekday workplace activity has remained approximately 30 to 50% below the baseline measure for the entirety of the pandemic.
• There is less spread in activity by county in the Central Valley (10-15% spread) compared to the Bay Area (20-25% spread).
  • For example, in the week of March 16, 2020, Contra Costa county (the Bay Area county with the least significant decline in workplace activity) saw an average decrease of 46.8% compared to San Francisco County that saw a decrease of 68.8%.

San Francisco has experienced the most significant decline in weekday workplace activity across both regions, witnessing an average decrease of more than 60% over the course of the pandemic.

 

Seeing the Data: Weekend Workdays

The next two charts show the weekend-only workplace activity. When compared to weekday-only workplace activity, weekend-only activity data suggests more significant recovery across both regions. Despite an initial rapid decline, similar to weekday activity, recovery in weekend workplace activity has been much more significant and sustained. The weekend activity charts reveal several insights:

• Weekend workplace activity depicted a greater decrease in the Bay Area compared to the Central Valley, similar to weekday activity.
  • In the first two weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 (March 15th – 31st), the decrease in workplace activity in the Bay Area was 34%, compared to a 24% drop in the Central Valley.
  • This trend persisted throughout the pandemic and in March of 2021: although the gap has narrowed, the Bay Area still experienced a greater average decrease in weekend workplace activity (18%) compared to the Central Valley (12%).
• Compared to weekday activity, weekend workplace activity has witnessed significant recovery across both regions that has remained relatively stable since May of 2020.
  • For example, in the Bay Area, weekend workplace activity reached its maximum decline during the week of March 30th, 2020 experiencing a decrease in activity of approximately 50% across the region. However, by the end of May 2020, average activity across the region had increased to 10-20% below the baseline measure. This rate has persisted throughout the course of the pandemic, and on April 3rd, 2021 weekend workplace activity across the Bay Area averaged 19% below the baseline measure.
  • This trend was very similar in the Central Valley. While the initial decline was lower than in the Bay Area, reaching a maximum average decline of 41%, there was more spread across the Central Valley counties. For example, on Saturday April 4th, El Dorado County saw the most significant decrease in workplace activity with a 54% decline, compared to Merced County which saw a 35% decrease the same day.
  • Despite a lower average weekend workplace activity decline, the Central Valley has reached a similar degree of recovery to the Bay Area. Weekend workplace activity in the Central Valley, like the Bay Area, reached an average level of weekend workplace activity in May of 2020 between 10 and 20% below the baseline measure that has persisted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Why these trends?

These findings are in line with reporting on telecommuting and the disproportionate labor burden on employees in “essential” or “frontline” sectors such as food service or grocery. Google’s Community Mobility Report data indicates more significant recovery in workplace activity on the weekends than on the weekdays, perhaps demonstrating how office employees working typical Monday-Friday workweeks have been able to telecommute whilst workers in service and retail whose hours are dependent on weekends, when business is most profitable, have largely returned to work in accordance with COVID-19 reopening guidelines. Examples of such industries are food service, retail, and personal care services. These weekend workers in inflexible industries either unable or unwilling to transition to teleworking are predominantly non-white and low-income as compared to their telecommuting counterparts.

The low workplace weekday activity numbers largely stay stagnant despite recent state and local guideline changes that have allowed for a limited return to office space settings. This further indicates that though Californians are beginning to prepare to return to a semblance of normalcy post COVID-19, the remote work revolution may in part be here to stay. While more remote workers are adjusting to make their home workspaces permanent, essential workers, who have spent the past year keeping the country’s lights on, continue to be left behind in low-wage industries with hazardous work and little union representation. California’s 1.1 million healthcare workers staffing hospitals and community health clinics on the frontline of the pandemic–often at great risk to themselves–have expressed widespread overexhaustion, burnout, and stress while fighting for their patients’ lives and for adequate PPE.  Over 153,000 of these healthcare workers are employed in the Bay Area, with another nearly 84,000 employed in the Central Valley.

Regional variation in workplace activity changes between Bay Area counties and Central Valley counties align with differences in industrial composition and how they’ve adjusted, or failed to adjust, to the COVID-19 pandemic. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that between February and September of 2020 a staggering 1.6 million jobs were lost statewide, with women, Latinx populations, and workers with low educational attainment among the most affected by COVID-19 related job loss. The Google Community Mobility Reports data indicate a steeper decrease and slower recovery in workplace activity in the Bay Area than in the Central Valley area. Despite the ability for many tech employees in the San Francisco area to telecommute, other industries characteristic of California’s 4th largest city–travel, leisure, art, and food service among them–have taken massive job losses. Low-wage workers in close contact industries such as hospitality and leisure have faced the most severe job loss, particularly in the Bay Area where 67,200 jobs, or nearly half of all hospitality jobs, were lost between February 2020 and February 2021. The food services and drinking industry in the Bay Area also lost 51,800 jobs, and the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector cut 11,200. Despite these job losses, increased recovery is expected in accordance with a recent “Rehiring and Retention” bill signed into law in California seeking to place workers laid-off or furloughed by the COVID-19 pandemic back into their former positions. The figure below shows industry employment by year, by region, with the decrease in leisure and hospitality employment outlined for reference, utilizing data from the State of California’s Employment Development Department.

Another possible factor in the Central Valley area’s ability to maintain a steadier rate of workplace activity and employment as compared to the Bay Area is its growing dominance as a hub for e-commerce distribution, warehousing, and logistics. A 2019 study published by the University of Pacific’s Center for Business and Policy Research has identified San Joaquin County not only as a historic hub for trade in Northern California, but a contemporary epicenter for goods movement. Transportation and warehouse employment has exceeded employment in the retail sector in the region, with the Stockton-Lodi area having the second highest concentration of transportation and warehousing employment in the entire country. With strategic proximity to the Bay Area, robust transportation infrastructure, and swaths of low cost land, the region is home to Amazon, Costco, and FedEx fulfillment centers; just to name a few. While these warehouse workers appear to have largely retained employment, in part due to e-commerce’s incredible economic success during the pandemic, concerns about unsafe working conditions and unmitigated exposure to COVID-19 should provide pause on the industry’s continued success.

When compared to weekday-only workplace activity, recent weekend only activity data suggests more significant recovery across both regions. Despite an initial rapid decline similar to weekday activity, recovery in weekend workplace activity has been much more significant and sustained, particularly in the February and March 2021 months, showing great promise that true economic recovery is on the horizon sooner than expected for the hard hit service, retail, and hospitality sectors. Increased vaccination rates, business reopenings, and additional fiscal stimulus have all paved the way for weekend workplace activity to bounce back while many weekday tech and office workers continue to remain remote. Still, it’ll likely take more than increased vaccine supply and a June 15 reopening target to coax many of the 36,500 workers who have dropped out of the job market back into the workplace, suggesting that signs of decreasing unemployment are not necessarily indicative of economic recovery.

Google’s Community Mobility Reports data suggest that for many American workers, the COVID-19 pandemic has cemented the transformation of a decades long workplace culture of cubicles and water cooler conversations into one of Zoom video conferences and home offices. But for low-wage workers struggling with either COVID-19 related job loss or the continued stress of working long hours for little pay, post-COVID 19 work life may be less of a transformation and more of an uphill struggle. Regaining employment is just one part of the greater struggle low-wage workers are currently experiencing in a COVID-19 labor market, with other concerns about workplace safety and making enough income to pay rent ever present. Rather than giving empty praise to California’s essential workers, perhaps as a state, we ought to support creating new labor standards that guarantee good pay and safe workplace conditions for laborers in critical industries unable to pivot towards remote work.