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As Women Return to Jobs, Remote Work Could Lock in Gains
Read Stateline coverage of the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic “shecession” is fading as more women return to jobs across the country, aided by new workplace flexibility that could lock in future increases in female employment. Remote work, a loosening of 9-5 workday constraints and evolving ideas such as “returnships” to help women back […]
Small Towns Drew Most New Pandemic Residents
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the number of people who moved out of Manhattan during the first year of the pandemic. Bend, Oregon, is in the middle of nowhere—two and a half hours from Eugene over a mountain pass that can be treacherous even in springtime. And that’s what people like […]
Detroit Challenges 2020 Census Count
Detroit is the largest city yet to challenge 2020 census results, citing a study showing low-income neighborhoods were undercounted by as much as 8%, possibly leaving out tens of thousands of people. The city joins at least 20 others filing challenges under the Count Question Resolution program. Those don’t include a separate review of institutional […]
The Census Missed Some Folks. These Cities Want Them Counted.
When the 2020 census found that tiny McNab, Arkansas, had lost more than half its residents, Mayor James Conway went door to door and found 45 people in the rural town instead of the 30 reported by the census. “The census is showing that we went down from 68 [in 2010] to 30 people, and […]
The Pandemic Prompted People to Move, But Many Didn’t Go Far
The annual Halloween party last year was a revelation for locals in Orcas Island, Washington, a scenic rural spot 100 miles north of Seattle. “For the first time in the 10 years we’ve lived here, we didn’t recognize about two-thirds of the families,” said Edee Kulper, a photographer who blogs about life on the island. […]
Redistricting Delays Scramble State Elections
With election district lines still uncertain in many states, potential candidates for state legislatures and Congress are facing challenging decisions about whether to run in districts that may not exist. Pandemic delays already had pushed back the release of census data needed for drawing new district lines, which must be redrawn every 10 years to […]
Working Parents Face Continued Chaos Despite Reopened Schools
Kelly McCormick thought she’d be back on the job long ago, but the coronavirus pandemic continually finds ways to keep her home helping her two young children. One day in December, her son’s Maryland school told her to pick up her 10-year-old immediately: He had been exposed to COVID-19 by a classmate who sat near […]
Retirements Cut Ranks of Scarce Frontline Workers
Read Stateline coverage of the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. After decades of police work, the idea of retiring started sounding good to Craig Long when COVID-19 struck suburban Suffern, New York, in March 2020. He was in his early 60s. As a veteran detective, Long was assigned in the pandemic’s early days to help investigate […]
GOP Uses Redistricting to Retain Outsized Statehouse Power
This year’s redistricting of state legislatures is shaping up as extremely partisan across the country, as the parties in power seek to hold onto sometimes-thin statehouse majorities with creative map-drawing. At the forefront are diversifying but still Republican states in the South, such as Georgia and Texas, where cities are becoming magnets for Democratic-leaning newcomers […]
Census 2020 Gets Its First Challenges
Three small Georgia municipalities are the first to file formal challenges to their 2020 census counts, while some bigger cities are pressuring the U.S. Census Bureau to correct tallies that city officials say came in too low amid the pandemic chaos surrounding the count. The congressional House Oversight Committee asked the Census Bureau for more […]
Census Recounts Fail to Account for COVID Chaos, Cities Say
Nelsonville, Ohio, faced a lot of the same challenges that cities around the country did during the 2020 census: renters and older people who were hard to reach, college students who left town during the pandemic and widespread distrust of government questions. The initial results showed that Nelsonville’s population had dropped below 5,000, which under […]
Pandemic Sweetens Lure of Smaller Cities’ Relocation Incentives
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Aaron Miller’s title and to correct the spelling of Grant Bumgarner’s name. TULSA — Moving from New York City to Tulsa, Oklahoma, might seem an unlikely choice for a young African American scientist like Christopher Bland. His new home is known as an old oil boomtown—and […]