‘Deadly cocktail’: Here’s why some blue states are still reeling from job losses four years after pandemic

Some blue-chip states are still reeling from job losses suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, with economists pointing to the after-effects of tough lockdown policies as a major reason.

New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, Hawaii and the District of Columbia have yet to fully recover from the job losses incurred at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in February 2020. While each state and DC have their own circumstances specific factors leading to their economic weakness, their slow growth and recovery is partly attributable to the oppressive restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic that they imposed on top of already restrictive economic atmospheres, according to economists who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: Most Americans Think U.S. Economy Is In Recession, Poll Shows)

“The states that ignored the medical data on COVID-19 and locked down particularly hard and long were almost exclusively Democrat-run states,” EJ Antoni, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center on the Federal Budget, told the Times. DCNF. “It took them longer to recover economically, and some still haven’t, because the damage done was so great.”

Washington, DC, suffered the largest job losses, falling from 801,900 total jobs in the county in February 2020 to 767,400 since April. There are still about 27,800 fewer jobs in Hawaii than before the COVID-19 pandemic, falling from 663,800 to 636,000 over the same time period.

New York has almost recovered the jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, only 6,200 from February 2020 to April 2024. Massachusetts is still below pre-pandemic levels at 13,100 in the same time frame.

The total number of jobs in Maryland is 2,752,000 as of April, slightly lower than the state’s 2,783,000 jobs in February 2020. Vermont is also slightly below the 315,800 jobs it had at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, decreased to 314,700 during April.

In contrast, there are nearly 6 million more jobs in the US economy since April than in February 2020, despite an initial decline of nearly 22 million at the start of the pandemic. The four states with the largest relative job growth since February 2020 were Idaho, Utah, Florida, and Texas, all Republican-led states that did not impose significant restrictions or lifted them too quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic. 19.

“U.S. states that imposed stricter, non-pharmaceutical lockdown measures have seen slower recoveries,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told DCNF. “Within those states, officials and their supporters will say they are recovering from a pandemic, which is untrue. They are actually recovering from the policies they adopted to combat the spread of the virus.”

8 states and DC have fewer jobs than before the pandemic, while ID and UT have gained more than 11%, FL, TX and NV more than 9%; IL and NY still haven’t recovered and likely won’t anytime soon; public policy has consequences: pic.twitter.com/8KU2ta1I5k

– EJ Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) May 18, 2024

The number of businesses in Manhattan alone fell by more than 5,200 from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the New York City comptroller. New York City maintained many COVID-19 restrictions long after other states had lifted theirs, including not opening indoor dining to 25% of its pre-pandemic capacity until February 2021 and not allowing movie theaters open until March 2021.

“These also tend to be states with high taxes and heavy overregulation,” Antoni told DCNF. “This has proven to be a lethal cocktail for economic growth. To be clear, there was already a disparity in the growth rate between red and blue states before COVID, but public policy decisions since 2020 have exacerbated this difference. Additionally, government-imposed lockdowns also kept blue states in economic stasis while red states grew, broadly speaking.

the Republican governor. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts was in office during the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, launching a phased reopening in May that was then halted in August, according to NBC Boston. Many restrictions were then reinstated in November after a spike in COVID cases, keeping the state from moving into the fourth phase of the reopening plan until March 2021, which allowed large indoor and outdoor facilities to resume. the service.

Maryland similarly began lifting initial restrictions in the summer of 2020, only to reinstate them in November amid a backlog of cases, not lifting capacity restrictions until May 2021, according to Capital New Service Maryland . DC lifted its capacity limits in May 2021 as well, but kept its broader mask mandate until the end of the year.

Hawaii was hit particularly hard by its COVID-19 restrictions because of the effects they had on the state’s robust tourism industry, according to USA Today. Hawaii did not lift the mandatory five-day quarantine when entering the state without proof of a vaccine or test for COVID until March 2022.

Vermont waited until 80% of the state’s eligible population had received at least one dose of the vaccine to end the state’s COVID-19 state of emergency, which did not occur until June 2021. The state of emergency imposed restrictions on different for social gatherings and business operations.

“I assume there are so many people leaving blue states and red states that that population shift alone will explain a lot of the job numbers,” Michael Faulkender, chief economist at the US First Policy Institute, told DCNF. . “If you have fewer adults in your state because they’ve moved to a more liberty-friendly state, then you’re simply going to have fewer workers in your state.”

New York’s population fell by more than 530,000 from 2020 to 2023, prompting the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, to warn in mid-2023 that the state could see a budget shortfall in fiscal year 2025 due to a possible decline in tax revenue, according to the City. and New York State.

Massachusetts’ population fell by nearly 32,000 between April 2020 and July 2023, to just over 7 million residents. The state’s GDP grew just 1.8% in 2023, up 2.1% from a year earlier.

Hawaii’s population also shrank from April 2020 to July 2023, falling by more than 20,100 residents, according to the Census Bureau. The state’s GDP has yet to recover from the more than 10% drop it took in 2020.

The GDP of the country as a whole grew by 2.5% in 2023 and by 1.9% in 2022.

D.C.’s population fell from 689,548 in April 2020 to 678,972 as of July 2023, according to the Census Bureau. The county’s economy grew by just 1% in 2023 and 0.9% in 2022.

Louisiana was the only red state that has yet to fully recover all of the jobs it lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a drop of 27,100. The state lost nearly 80,000 residents between 2020 and 2023.

While state economies suffered, some managed to suppress total COVID-19 deaths compared to other states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Vermont had only 16 deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, and Hawaii had only 16.8.

Other states were less successful in curbing deaths, with New York having the second-highest deaths per 100,000 in 2024 at 139.1 and Massachusetts at 100.2, according to the CDC. Maryland was about average for states, with 80.9 deaths per 100,000 people.

“The lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were probably the most damaging policy measures put in place,” Earle told DCNF. “They forced firms to close for long periods, putting millions of Americans out of work overnight. Worse, they had a disproportionately brutal impact on small businesses, which are the cauldron of jobs and economic growth in the United States. A future James Bond superhero won’t use space lasers or weather control to destroy the US economy – they’ll just cite a biological threat and impose indefinite lockdowns.”

The governors’ offices of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland and Hawaii and the DC mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment from DCNF.

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