National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA): Essential Workers by Census Tract and ZIP Code Tabulation Area, United States, 2016-2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, certain occupations and industries were deemed "essential", and typically included individuals who worked in healthcare, food service, public transportation, etc. However, early on in the pandemic, while these workers faced disproportionately higher risks, they often did not receive adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), were unable to work from home, and were limited in their ability to take other precautions to safeguard their health (Chen et al., 2021). As a result, previous studies have documented higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death among essential workers compared to their non-essential worker counterparts (Selden & Berdahl, 2021; Wei et al., 2022). This dataset provides users with information on the number and proportion of essential workers in census tracts or ZIP Code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in the United States over the 2016-2020 period.