Numbers published by the U.S. Census Bureau Thursday confirm that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted many aspects of life in the United States and the Lehigh Valley region. The data, from the bureau’s American Community Survey, are a collection of continuing surveys mandated by various laws to help federal agencies gauge the effectiveness of programs.

Since the ACS is a survey of fewer than 3% of U.S. households and not a full count like the ten-year Census, it is subject to margins of error. In order to keep margins of error under acceptable limits, the bureau does not include data for areas with fewer than 65,000 people, meaning only 39 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties are included in the one-year estimates.

Pandemic-induced shutdowns and lockdowns moved thousands of workers from the office to home. More than one out of every six employees reported working from home last year, according to the Census. That rate represents a greater than threefold increase from 2019 to 2021.

Lehigh and Northampton counties saw an even more dramatic shift of office workers commuting to work in their bedroom slippers, more than quadrupling the rate of home work from just over 4% to more than 17%. The statewide rate is higher still, at close to one out of five workers now based at home.

The Census Bureau, along with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tracks income and poverty in American households and families. There are two prevailing measures: the poverty rate, which tracks household income compared with a poverty level for that household size; and a supplemental poverty measure, which tracks income along with various mandatory expenses like taxes and health care. The numbers below are from the former.

Poverty inched up across the United States and in Pennsylvania, where it went from 12% in 2019 to 12.1% in 2021. But poverty increased more dramatically in the Lehigh Valley and its surrounding counties, led by Carbon County. Lehigh and Monroe counties are the only ones among the 8 regional counties in having their poverty rate shrink over the course of the pandemic, dropping from 11.9% in 2019 to 11.3% last year in Lehigh and moving from 13% to 11% in Monroe.

But people are not economically secure just because they are above the official poverty rate. Various medical, nutrition and housing assistance programs use multiples of the poverty level as their qualification threshold. The chart below shows the number of households with income under twice the official poverty income level. Once again, Carbon County has the highest current rate, with more than one-third of its residents living near or below the poverty line.

The pandemic disrupted schools at least as much as workplaces, with total shutdowns, scrambling to find the technology and expertise to move to remote learning models, and renovating school facilities to make them safer for students and staff.

The youngest children — those less than 5 years old — saw wide swings in enrollment before and during the pandemic, depending on locality. Nationwide, preschool enrollment dropped almost 20%. The Morning Call coverage area saw percentage decreases in enrollment of 41% in Berks County up to a percentage increase of 47% in preschool enrollment in Schuylkill County. Northampton County’s preschool enrollment declined 23% over two years.

At the other end of the spectrum, most areas saw fewer 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds enrolled in school. Bucks and Northampton were the only counties in the region to see increasing teen enrollment, with Bucks going from 96.9% to 97.9%, and Northampton moving from 97% to 99.1% during the pandemic.

Carbon County had the sharpest decrease in enrollment — from 100% enrollment in 2019 to 87.5% in 2021.

As the pandemic shutdowns pushed people to move from physical proximity to virtual reality, access to high-speed internet connections became critically important for work or school. Pennsylvania was slightly under the national rate for broadband subscriptions before the pandemic, but the state did not keep up with the improvements the rest of the country experienced in the last two years: while the national broadband rate increased 3.4% in two years, Pennsylvania’s rate increased only 2.7%.

The outlook was better for households with children present, with 94.9% of children under the age of 18 having access to high-speed internet in the state. But Lehigh County has the worst rate of access to the internet at home for children in The Morning Call coverage area — 93.9%, compared with Montgomery’s 98.4%.