Unemployment rates are slightly below pre-pandemic levels in rural counties but are still significantly higher in urban counties
- by Elizabeth A. Dobis, Thomas Krumel and Austin Sanders
- 2/7/2022
By late January 2022, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in 71 million cases and 860,000 deaths across the United States. The pandemic’s effects varied by location, however, with differences apparent in rural (nonmetro) and urban (metro) parts of the country, as well as between persistently poor counties and those that were not.