The Cornell Policy Review recently posted an article that caught my eye – Rural Connection: Increasing Broadband Infrastructure to Meet 21st Century Needs. It made the case that rural areas need broadband. Here’s their conclusion…

Time will tell whether or not the efforts to close the rural broadband gap will be successful. Stakeholders in this effort recognize the positive externalities that could come from connecting communities, such as access to health services, education, and infrastructure improvements. Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, said “Without a proper broadband connection, these communities can’t start or run a modern business, access telemedicine, take an online class, digitally transform their farm, or research a school project online,” he adds, “You see this dilemma play out in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data, which shows the highest unemployment rates are frequently located in the counties with the lowest availability of broadband. As a nation, we can’t afford to turn our backs on these communities as we head into the future”

It led me to wonder if the best/worst counties for broadband access lined up with best/worst for unemployment rates. So I looked up the most recent unemployment rates, which are from April. So these reflect the first month of pandemic life. Statewide the unemployment when from:

• March 2020 – 3.6
• April 2020 – 8.6
• May 2020 – 9.4

I looked at the most recent broadband rank (for speeds of 100 Mbps down and 20 up), unemployment percentage and unemployment rank. I’ll paste the table below. If you download the spreadsheet you’ll see I tried to color-code the top ranking broadband counties and lowest ranking (so best employment) unemployment counties. So red is good.

I was hoping that something might jump out at me as I compared to two statistics. That wasn’t the case. But the info might be helpful on a county level.