Wednesday, April 22, 2020

The storm warning - some states tanked in March, before they all did in April

The recently-released state-by-state jobs report for March made an already-weird nationwide report look even weirder. Because what grabs you in the report is how wide the variation in COVID-19 effects were among states by the second week of March.

The US saw its unemployment jump by 0.9%, from 3.5% to 4.4%, but some states were experiencing much larger jumps in unemployment, led by Nevada’s monthly increase of 2.7% and Colorado's 2.0%.


But you’ll also see that some of those states were seeing declines in unemployment, because they hadn’t done much for shutdowns as of that time, or lost a lot of people out of their work force before they were listed as “unemployed”. One of those states was Wisconsin, whose unemployment rate dropped from 3.5% in February to 3.4% in March. Our big spike (along with many other states) is coming for the April report.

A similar story held for the payrolls survey, where 31 states had statistically significant declines in unemployment for March (but 19 didn't), with widely varying effects among that group.


But again, Wisconsin was not on that list. We did lose 6,900 jobs, but that’s small compared to what had happened in most other states in the Midwest in mid-March.

Change in total jobs Feb – March 2020
Iowa -3,500
Wis. -6,900
Minn -14,400
Ind. -17,600
Mich -24,300
Ill. -34,100
Ohio -39,700

And the big variance among those Midwestern states is concentrated in the Leisure and Hospitality sector (aka bars, restaurants, hotels, and entertainment industries), which indicates that some of those states were closing up before others. For most of these states, this one sector accounted for nearly half of the job losses in the month, and more than half in a couple of states.


The level of job losses from March is nothing compared to what we’ll see in the next jobs report for April. And what will be intriguing in that one is not just the unprecedented scale of one-month job losses, but also to look and see which sectors are hit harder than others, and which aren’t getting hit at all. Most sectors were unscathed in mid-March 2020, but we’ve seen the coronavirus recession spread into many other areas over the last month.

4 comments:

  1. ..."And what will be intriguing in that one is not just the unprecedented scale of one-month job losses..."

    'Intriguing,' huh? Great word choice to make by a fat and happy government bureaucrat who has had to make ZERO sacrifices during this mess. Real empathy there for all the business owners who pay your fucking salary with their taxes, you worthless sack of shit.

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    1. It is intriguing and historic. If you can't recognize that, you don't really care about economic analysis. You're just a troll and a hack.

      But hey, if you have such sympathy for those workers that have lost their jobs, then you'll agree that they should have paid sick leave, a $12-$15 minimum wage, and health care that doesn't rely on their job. Riiiight?

      Hey kid, you need bureaucrats these days in order to keep more people from hurting, after the recklessness of others allowed the economy to collapse when a bit of sickness hits.

      I'd be kinder if I was you. We're finding out how unnecessary the "job creators" really are. And you'd admit this, if those guys didn't pay you to say otherwise.

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  2. Matthew Rothchild just wrote this; "They’d rather have the 'free market' decide everything instead of our elected officials. We’re a democracy: We elect people to represent us and to govern us during a crisis. We don’t elect the 'free market' to govern us."

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  3. An investment billionaire pointed out today that if public and private companies expect a bailout each time the economy tanks, the reality of that is that additional taxes will need to be paid by companies both small and large because there are currently too many loopholes in the tax system.

    It's not realistic to have any company or oranization of any size paying 0% due to extra tax breaks through lobbying or through a combination of write off and subsidies. If economic hardship insurance was offered by private companies, i can guarantee it wouldn't be offered for free or anywhere near free. So it's rediculous to assume the government can save or bail out every business free of charge. The real queation is, why were businesses of all sizes not prepared for a slow down or recession...people have known for years that we were due for a recession.

    It appears many had not prepared for the possibility of it actually happening. Election years can often be turbulent anyways even without recessions. The other question is why companies haven't been penalized for being more loyal to China than our own country. The US needs to demand loyalty in the form of investment in communities, wages, infrastructure, benefits and improving the quality of life for all Americans, and if not, higher taxes and tariffs should be assessed to give pro American companies an advantage for being loyal and to penalize unloyal individuals and companies that refuse to change their ways.

    Foreign investors also need to pay taxes for profits they take because profits also need to benefit America or why should we allow them if they don't?

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