Abstract
The United States requires an enormous class of workers to keep essential services online. The Department of Homeland Security uses a sweeping definition of such essential industries from grocery stores to hospitals to warehouses, which collectively employed 90 million workers prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. A portion of these essential workers—or “frontline” workers—must physically show up to their jobs and have been especially vulnerable to additional health and economic risks, including many employed in infrastructure-related activities. This analysis—based on Brookings Institution posts written in March and June 2020—defines the country’s essential workforce and explores their economic and demographic characteristics in greater depth, revealing a need for continued protections and investments as part of the COVID-19 recovery.
Introduction
COVID-19 has been a genuine shock to daily life. Typical activities—sitting down at a restaurant, meeting with colleagues, hugging a friend—are suddenly foreign and deeply missed. From coast to coast, mayors and governors have wisely recommended residents to keep physically apart, all to minimize a massive wave of infections and give health care systems a chance to mitigate the virus.
The early result was a massive economic seizure among certain industries and their workforces. Over only a few months, there have been millions of layoffs spread across food retail, shopping, tourism, and intercity travel industries. In tandem with the unfolding health emergency, the economic crisis is now perpetually the country’s top story. As a result, congressional, state, and local leaders are pursuing policies to support these workers and their employers in these tumultuous times, including the $2 trillion CARES Act and other stimulus measures.
While millions of people are laid off, another set of individuals work in industries that the nation collectively asks to not slow down. The “essential” workers in these industries ensure that the hundreds of millions of people under social distancing or shelter-in-place orders can continue to live their lives. They keep food on store shelves, allow the lights to turn on, make sure the trash gets picked up, and—critically—continue to provide needed health care. They also include many workers who operate and maintain our infrastructure, whether keeping our water running, ensuring our broadband is up to speed, and more.
As the COVID-19 pandemic and recession has deepened, policymakers have continued to face questions around how to protect essential workers, especially the subset who must physically report to their jobs and are most vulnerable to health risks—or “frontline” workers.
This analysis—based on Brookings Institution posts written in March and June 2020—explores this issue in greater depth (Tomer & Kane, 2020a, 2020b). Using a mix of Department of Homeland Security definitions and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, we examine the 90 million workers employed in America’s essential industries, with a particular focus on the 50 million who qualify as frontline workers. Their size and composition underscore a need for more specific definitions to prioritize their safety and determine the cost and eligibility for pandemic-specific benefits, such as additional equipment, insurance, sick leave, hazard pay, and other protections.
Defining Essential and Frontline Workers
Responding to an executive order signed by President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated a list of essential infrastructure workers who “protect their communities, while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security” (Department of Homeland Security [DHS], 2020). The advisory list (it is not a federal directive, nor does it include specific occupation codes) covers workers in a broad array of industries. Since the initial release, DHS has also updated their federal guidance on which work activities would qualify as essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To get a sense of just how many workers could be impacted, we relate the qualitative information in the DHS list to specific industry codes. While it can be statistically difficult to isolate essential workers in these industries, the aim has been to define a range of possible employment totals (Mongey et al., 2020). Our expectation is that most support staff in these essential industries will continue to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s hard to gauge exactly how many workers fall into this category. For example, hospitals will not just rely on doctors and nurses—cleaning staff, cooks, and others are still necessary to keep the hospital functional. Local governments will also need police officers and firefighters to keep working, alongside administrative and maintenance workers. Given all this uncertainty, and recognizing that an increasing number of cities and states under lockdown have developed their own definitions of who is essential, we chose to quantify essential workers by the broadest potential range of total industry employment.
These DHS-designated industries employed nearly 90 million workers in 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), representing about 62% of the total U.S. workforce. This is a staggering share of all workers, confirming the sheer scale of the human infrastructure necessary to keep the country safe and economically resilient during a pandemic. Included are numerous workers involved in operating and maintaining critical infrastructure systems, such as those in water utilities, transit agencies, and related establishments (Kane, 2020). While some essential workers earn competitive wages, many are employed in industries that pay below the national median ($18.58 per hour), ranging from food and beverage stores to nursing care facilities.
As shown in Table 1, we were able to categorize employment across 16 different DHS-designated economic sectors, led by 23.2 million workers in state and local government functions, especially well-represented by teachers and protective service officers. Public sector workers represented almost 26% of all essential workers. Another 21 million worked in health care industries, and over 10 million in transportation and logistics. All told, over 54 million workers spanned just these three sectors.
Essential Worker Employment, by DHS Sector, 2018.
Source. Authors’ analysis of Department of Homeland Security and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Originally published on brookings.edu.
Note. *Note that a separate DHS sector not shown—law enforcement and public safety—is captured under this category due to statistical limitations.
Note that restaurants are mostly excluded from this sector.
Note that many water workers are captured under government operations and public works.
However, just because DHS designates an industry as essential does not mean the risks and responsibilities for all these workers are the same—or that every worker must commute to a job site. Broadband capabilities mean employers and employees are testing new boundaries around working and collaborating from home, keeping operations active while eliminating the threat from unnecessary exposure to other people (Brynjolfsson et al., 2020). The issue is further complicated by varying “essential” designations at the state and local level. Nor is there any guarantee that DHS-designated essential industries will continue to see the demand to stay open or keep their workers employed.
It’s the subset of essential workers who have to physically show up to their jobs—or “frontline” workers—that face the most direct health risks by frequently being in close physical proximity to customers and colleagues or being exposed to germs and other potentially hazardous conditions. These workers should be the first-order priority for policymakers concerned with physical and economic security, as we described in our original Brookings Institution post (Tomer & Kane, 2020a).
BLS Occupational Employment Statistics, the American Time Use Survey, and O*NEt allow us to better identify frontline workers, including what types of occupations can work from home, the levels of exposure they face on the job, and relevant wage and demographic details (O*NET Online, 2020). These data sources do not capture all the potential risks that frontline workers face, but they offer a start to more detailed conversations. Our analysis builds off of recent articles from the World Economic Forum and other organizations to consistently identify frontline occupations that often (1) cannot work from home and (2) are concentrated in the essential DHS sectors identified above (Lu, 2020).
Among the 808 total occupations where data is available, we found there are 380 frontline occupations that employ nearly 50 million workers nationally, or around a third (34.5%) of all U.S. workers. From personal care aides to delivery service drivers to retail salespersons, frontline workers make up a majority of the 90 million essential workers. The remaining 40 million “other essential workers” include those in an assortment of office, administrative, and teaching occupations critical to keeping operations going, but have a demonstrated ability to work from home. On average, only about 3.9% of frontline workers can work from home, compared to 64% of other essential workers. Frontline workers also tend to earn lower wages on average ($21.95 per hour) compared to all U.S. workers ($24.98 per hour), confirming the economic disadvantages many of these workers faced even before the pandemic (see Table 2).
Frontline Occupations and Other Essential Occupations, 2018.
Source: Authors’ analysis of Department of Homeland Security and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Originally published on brookings.edu.
Note. Note that estimating the share of workers who can work from home is based on American Time Use Survey microdata and authors’ adjustments.
Protecting Essential Workers
Even as tens of millions of people could be exposed to COVID-19 in their workplace, not all essential workers are equally prepared to manage coronavirus-related health impacts in their own lives. The location and nature of their workplace can expose them to more health hazards, including well-reported concerns at warehouses and other infrastructure facilities (Weise, 2020). At the same time, lower income levels and other demographic characteristics may highlight particular vulnerabilities to COVID-19—including a high share of frontline workers who tend to be more racially diverse, less educated, and male.
Simply showing up to work has put many essential workers at risk. Looking at 15 selected occupations found across the DHS categories (Table 3), many workers are in close physical proximity to others, exposed to disease and infections, and have frequent face-to-face interactions. Health care practitioners and support workers face the greatest levels of exposure. On average, 85% of these workers are frequently in close proximity to others, 79% are frequently exposed to disease, and 89% have frequent face-to-face interactions. Infrastructure workers, such as bus drivers (87% of whom are frequently in close proximity to others), couriers and messengers (68% of whom are frequently exposed to disease), and telecommunications line installers and repairers (80% of whom have frequent face-to-face interactions) also face considerable risks and require close monitoring (Kane & Tomer, 2020).
Rates of Physical Proximity, Disease Exposure, and Face-to-Face Interactions, 15 Representative Occupations, 2018.
Source: Authors’ analysis of Department of Homeland Security, OES, and O*NET data. Originally published on brookings.edu.
Note. Shares of workers with “frequent” physical proximity, disease exposure, and face-to-face interactions are based on underlying worker survey data. Workers rate whether they experienced these relevant work contexts all the time or most of the time.
Since cashiers are employed in many different industries, we have focused on those in grocery stores and related establishments only.
Although millions of nurses, therapists, and health care practitioners are earning higher wages, millions of other essential workers do not. From home health aides to packagers, some of the largest occupations in DHS’s list are not only exposed to hazards on the job, but they also earn much less than the country’s median wage ($18.58 per hour). Food preparation workers (median $11.41 per hour), stock clerks ($12.36), and physical therapist aides ($12.62) are among the lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers. As Figure 1 shows, nearly two-thirds of workers earning wages below the national median must be in close physical proximity to others in order to perform their jobs. By comparison, only 45% of workers earning wages above the national median must be in close physical proximity to others. Disease exposure also tends to be higher for lower-wage workers.
Rates of physical proximity, disease exposure, and face-to-face interactions for lower-wage workers and higher-wage workers, 2018.
Frontline workers face the most dire threats since they must physically show up to their workplace while earning lower wages. About half of all frontline workers (25.6 million) earn below-average wages and face above-average levels of physical proximity. But the more concerning fact is that frontline workers tend to represent certain segments of the population disproportionately affected by COVID-19—by education, gender, race, and other demographics (Schaner & Theys, 2020).
Frontline workers tend to be the most racially diverse essential workers (Figure 2). COVID-19 has hit Black and Latino or Hispanic workers especially hard, and both are well-represented in the frontline workforce. Together, these two groups account for 33.8% of frontline workers, compared to just 23.7% of other essential workers and 29% of all U.S. workers. Major occupations for Black and Latino or Hispanic frontline workers include industrial truck operators, slaughterers and meatpackers, nursing assistants, and correctional officers. Still, it’s impossible to overlook the high share of frontline workers who are white (61.1%).
Frontline occupations and other essential occupations, by race, 2018.
Frontline workers also tend to be less educated than other essential workers and the wider U.S. workforce (Figure 3), which can limit their ability to qualify for other jobs in the short and long term. Nearly half (47.1%) of frontline workers have a high school diploma or less, compared to 17.9% of other essential workers and 32.2% of all U.S. workers. Meanwhile, only 18.2% of frontline workers have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 52.8% of other essential workers and 37.6% of all U.S. workers. Frontline workers in construction and agriculture (including laborers and farmworkers) are among the least educated, with upwards of 85% having a high school diploma or less.
Frontline occupations and other essential occupations, by educational attainment, 2018.
Finally, most frontline workers are male (59.8%) (Figure 4). This share is not only higher than the U.S. average for all occupations (53%), but it is also considerably higher than the average for other essential occupations (38.6%). Many of these male workers are concentrated in construction, manufacturing, and the skilled trades. In contrast, female workers are much more concentrated in other essential occupations such as health care, education, and service activities. The gender statistics help explain the widespread “she-cession” among workers who have lost their jobs during COVID-19, especially when compared to the Great Recession’s “man-cession” (Wall, 2009).
Frontline occupations and other essential occupations, by gender, 2018.
What COVID-19 Has Taught Us About Investing in Human Infrastructure
All told, many people in DHS’s list of essential workers face an impossible choice. The country needs their professional services during this time of collective response—but continuing to work or commute if it is required could cause irreparable physical and financial harm to them and their families. The federal government has a moral and economic responsibility to protect essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and make investments for the future—particularly for those frontline workers that must continue to work outside the home. We emphasized this point in our original Brookings Institution post and re-emphasize it again here several months later (Tomer & Kane, 2020a)
First, these federal efforts should start with clearer definitions, namely a formal list of essential industries and their frontline workforces to better prioritize safety measures and other targeted benefits, such as protective equipment, hazard pay, and insurance. This analysis—among other studies—offers a start to better defining the country’s essential workforce, but Congress should designate one or more federal agencies to regularly update the list of frontline occupations and essential industries as it relates to pandemics and other public emergencies (City of New York Office of the Comptroller, 2020). Three groups are well-positioned to contribute to this effort: the Department of Labor, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and DHS. Whatever the coalition, Congress should mandate this group release a list of qualifying industries (by NAICS code) and occupations (by SOC code). Labor groups, industry leaders, researchers, and public health experts should provide input on these lists.
With clearer definitions, Congress can use these lists to determine the size of the country’s national security stockpile—which includes protective equipment and medical devices—to be able to rapidly safeguard the frontline workforce during a future pandemic. Congress should also establish a special commission to determine how federal “essential industry” and “frontline occupations” lists should legally relate to related state and local designations. These should specifically designate how federal benefits will flow to individuals based on state and local reopening lists, since the number and categories of workers will grow in time.
Identifying the most vulnerable essential workers can also help target federal support for improved health and life insurance for essential workers. The list described above can clarify the specific types of risks faced and price-out relevant policies, while informing debates around federally mandated paid sick leave and hazard pay (Kinder, 2020). Currently, many workers within DHS’s list of essential industries are unlikely to carry health or life insurance. Roughly 12% of workers in these industries do not have public or private medical insurance, leaving them, their spouses, and their dependents exposed to substantial medical expenses if they require COVID-19-related medical service (Table 4). The lowest-earning occupations are even more likely to be uninsured, making them especially vulnerable to high medical bills (Boal et al., 2018).
Rates of Health Insurance Coverage, 10 Representative Industries, United States, 2017.
Source. Authors’ analysis of Department of Homeland Security and 2017 American Community Survey 5-year data. Originally published on brookings.edu.
Note. *Industry names reflect 3-Digit NAICS terminology, while the essential industry employment reflects only those working in industries qualified via DHS designation.
To expand insurance coverage and provide other targeted protections, the federal government can use established programs as models to serve the needs of the essential workforce during COVID-19 and future emergencies. For instance, the Department of Defense’s Death Gratuity program can be a model for a new life insurance program for qualifying essential workers. The program provides “a one-time lump sum Death Gratuity of $100,000 to the primary next of kin of a Service member who dies while on active duty” (U.S. Army, 2020). A new COVID-19 Death Gratuity program could automatically insure any essential worker who dies due to COVID-19-related causes. The new program could provide a $50,000 lump sum to those essential workers with a surviving spouse, dependent children, or parents. Likewise, Medicare’s approach to COVID-19 treatment can model a targeted health insurance program to qualifying essential workers. Every Medicare beneficiary would receive full coverage for all COVID-19 testing, hospitalizations, and future vaccines, with some supplemental plans covering all other costs (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2020). A new Medicare-COVID-19 program could automatically permit any uninsured essential worker who works outside the home to receive the same level of care without any out-of-pocket expenses.
Even with additional protections on the job, many essential workers are susceptible to layoffs and may struggle to connect with other career pathways. COVID-19 has already cost millions of retail and manufacturing jobs considered essential by DHS, while essential jobs in construction, state and local government, and other activities may be lost, too (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). Congress and the executive branch should continue to monitor these trends closely, including discussions of how to best support disconnected and other prospective frontline workers in training and skills development. The infrastructure sector has sizable retirement and replacement needs across the country, teaches in-demand skills, pays higher wages, and has lower formal educational barriers to entry (Kane & Puentes, 2014). These are the types of career pathways vital to supporting inclusive economic growth during a recession and beyond.
The infrastructure jobs opportunity is a chance to establish a foundation for growth by fixing and improving our infrastructure while preparing a new generation of workers for stable, long-term careers. What’s needed now is helping students and other prospective workers (including disconnected youth and the out-of-work) get flexible training to qualify for essential jobs in our water plants, energy facilities, and other systems (Kane & Tomer, 2018). Many of these positions require worked-based learning, and apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs are vital conduits for infrastructure careers. Additional public funding for these programs would help, but incentivizing employers to invest in on-the-job training would make a difference, too.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has already inflicted enormous economic and physical pain. Some of the most heartbreaking stories are those of essential workers, including people of color and those who have been consistently underpaid. Many of these workers have lost their jobs, contracted the virus, or continue to report to unsafe work conditions. The federal officials sworn to protect them can do more, as we discussed in our original Brookings Institution posts (Tomer & Kane, 2020a, 2020b). Short-term relief matters, including additional protections, but so do steps that will position the country for long-term success. Creating formal definitions of frontline workers and the essential industries in which they work is an important, technical step to adopt policies that target the most vulnerable workers—both now and for future pandemics and emergencies.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.