New data from the Census Bureau revealed how much changed in Chester County during the pandemic, including how people worked and commuted, write Kasturi Pananjady and Aseem Shukla for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

The American Community Survey samples a representative group of U.S. residents annually and extrapolates those results to the entire population. The latest numbers measure life in 2021, which can be compared to data from 2019 to see how life changed in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

For example, the number of people working from home skyrocketed in 2021 to 29.1 percent. That is nearly one in three people working from home. 

The number of people using public transportation more than halved between 2019 and 2021, dropping to less than one percent. 

Meanwhile, Chester County saw its inequality values as measured by the Gini coefficient go down slightly from 0.477 in 2019 to 0.445 in 2021. 

Also, the suburbs have seen an increase in educated people who left the region. In 2019, 103,400 college graduates left the suburbs. That number went up to 123,000 in 2021. 

Read more about how things have changed in the Philadelphia Inquirer.