In 2020, our nation’s economy was booming. Then everything came to halt when COVID came to us from China. The country went into lockdown in an effort to “slow the spread,” sending unemployment levels skyrocketing to historic highs.
But thanks to President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, the federal government authorized three vaccines in record time and the lockdowns ended. Yet a year later, our nation has yet to recover the jobs it lost, as incentives to remain unemployed predictably kept people from going back to work.
But four states have managed to see a full recovery of the jobs lost during the COVID recession: Texas, Arizona, Idaho, and Utah.
“Texas and Arizona have joined two other states in recovering all the jobs they lost at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, leading a trend that is expected to include another dozen states by the middle of this year,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The states, which also include Utah and Idaho, have benefited from demographic shifts before and during the pandemic — experiencing outsize payroll growth in retail, warehousing, technology and transportation industries.”
What do these states all have in common? They’re red states. “The states — all Republican controlled — also have had relatively relaxed Covid-19 restrictions during the pandemic, which economists say softened the blow on their economies.”
“Those four states have experienced persistently strong population growth, which really wasn’t dented by the pandemic,” Adam Kamins, Moody’s Analytics director of regional economics told WSJ. “More and more people keep coming from expensive coastal cities to places like Dallas and Phoenix, which have a relatively lower cost of living and higher quality of life.”
In contrast, blue states like California are “lagging behind,” Kamins said.
Gee, I wonder why.
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