Update jobs recovery
Americas Majority Foundation has conducted four studies on the impact of the lockdown on unemployment and death per capita. What we found is that states that remove economic restrictions and moved away from lockdowns, had a better job recovery. Non-lockdown states and Republican states had lower unemployment from summer of 2020 to the present and there was little difference in death per capita.
An-Ignored-Cost.pdf (amermaj.org)
Data-Efficacy.pdf (amermaj.org)
Lockdown-Impact-On-Unemployment.pdf (amermaj.org)
Lockdown Failed - Americas Majority (amermaj.org)
We have conducted three surveys on a monthly basis, the first one was a comparison between states with Republican governors and Democratic governors, the second survey was conducted between the most populous states with Democratic governors and Republican governors: Illinois, Pennsylvania, California, New York, Florida, Texas, Ohio and Georgia, and the third survey, states with Republicans controlling all of the governments compared to Democrat controlling all levers of government.
Republican governors’ states have 3.2% unemployment and Democratic govern states had 4.2% A comparison with the most populous states with Republican governors had unemployment of 3.7% and Democratic governor states 4.8%. States where Republican control all vehicle of government had unemployment of 3 percent versus 4.3 percent for Democratic states.
25 percent of states with Republicans governor had replaced all jobs lost since February 2020 and only 4.5 percent of states with Democratic governors have.
And States with Republican governors had recovered 99 percent of jobs from February 2020 compared to 96.9% with Democratic governors. (The one Democratic state that managed to recover lost jobs had a Republican controlled legislature. There are no Democratic states that have both a Democratic governor and state control legislature.)
This trend has existed since 2020 as Republican governors consistently seen lower unemployment since the summer of 2020.
Our data shows that when you review different metrics, the case against the lockdowns and economic restrictions become overwhelming as the damage to society was larger than the positive results. Over the past year, both Democratic and Republican states saw increase in per capita death, so deaths continued no matter what.
Over the past 13 months, we saw a 47% increase in deaths per capita in Republican states and a 42% increase in death in Democratic states so death regardless of policies increased. Our data is but part of the story.
Casey Mulligan, Phil Kerpen and Stephen Moore reviewed all of the States performances and using different variable including controlling for health, age and various economic, found that non-lockdown states along withs states (mostly Republican) A Final Report Card on the States’ Response to COVID-19 | NBER
They concluded, “Pandemic mortality was greater in states where obesity, diabetes, and old age were more prevalent before the pandemic. Economic activity was less in states that had been intensive in, especially, accommodations and food. Still, much residual variation in both mortality and economic activity remains even after controlling for these factors because the 50 states and DC took very different approaches to confronting the Covid pandemic. Three states stand out as having combined scores well above the others: Utah, Nebraska, and Vermont. They were substantially above average in all three categories. Six more states followed, including Montana and South Dakota almost two standard deviations above the average in terms of economy but 0.8 to 1.0 below in terms of mortality (i.e., higher death rates). New Hampshire and Maine were about 1.5 standard deviations above average on mortality while also somewhat above average economically. Although sometimes criticized as having policies that were “too open,” Florida proved to have average mortality while maintaining a high level of economic activity and 96 percent open schools.”
Our continuous study from the foundation shows that the present job creation, came as a result of most Republican states reducing economic restrictions earlier than their Democratic counterpart. The biggest danger for our present economy is inflation which threatens push our economy into a recession that will derail the recovery.