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Rural Policy

Digital Infrastructure, Labor Market Structure, and Rural–Urban Gaps in Working from Home During COVID-19 Samuel Mindes*, Samuel Mindes, Samantha Mori,

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and intensified the long-standing geographic divide in access to digital infrastructure and flexible work arrangements. Using 25 months of data from the Current Population Survey (May 2020–May 2022), this study examines how working from home (WFH) patterns differed between rural and urban workers during the pandemic and whether these differences varied by employment characteristics and industry. We find a large and persistent rural–urban WFH gap that remains even after accounting for worker, job, household, and contextual factors. Full-time workers, wage workers, and those employed in high-WFH industries were more likely to work remotely overall. However, rural workers in these categories were less likely to WFH. Interaction models show that rural full-time workers and rural workers in Finance experienced fewer WFH opportunities than their urban counterparts, and patterns among the self-employed were more complex. These findings indicate that broadband access is necessary but not sufficient for enabling remote work in rural areas; the structure of rural labor markets also limits the feasibility of WFH. Documenting both the persistence and variation in the rural WFH disadvantage shows how digital infrastructure and job composition jointly shaped remote work opportunities during the pandemic.