F or the past several years, West Michigan’s 13-county* regional unemployment rate had been holding steady around 3.0%. That changed inMarch 2020, when theNovel Coronavirus (COVID-19) began spreading rapidly across the nation, causing the first wave of business closures. As the effects of these closures rippled throughout the region, West Michigan’s unemployment rate, sitting at 2.9% at the time, sky-rocketed up to 23.0% in April. However, as the economy has restarted theratehasdecreasedsignificantly. Themost recent data, made available in August 2020, shows that 7.6% of our region’s labor force participants are currently out of work. While the declining unemployment rate offers many reasons to be hopeful, the pandemic-induced recession continues to impact our economy. This impact isn’t felt equally by all industries. Instead, its effects are lopsided with certain industries, occupations, and regions being more dramatically affected than others. Thus, we can expect that the recovery will be lopsided too, with different groups taking longer to recover than others. Anexampleof this is shown inunemployment rate disparities across West Michigan counties. In April, Lake and Muskegon counties saw unemployment rates that were more than double the national rate of 14.7% and far above the statewide rate of 24.0% .counties, like Kent, Ottawa, Barry, and Allegan, only experienced rates that were 6-7% higher than the national rate, and well below the state.
insights as to which sectors have been affected themost, andwhichhave recovered. Michigan's major industries have regained over half of their job losses since March. The construction industry experienced the second-worst job loss hit from the pandemic but has also had the best recovery. Manufacturing was the third-worst affected industry but has made significant gains since March. On the other hand, the leisure and hospitality industries, which were the worst affected by far, continue to struggle in their recovery. Keep an eye out for our next West Michigan Dataconomy article, which will include a breakdown of the county-level data and allow us to take a closer look at how West Michigan’s recovery is shaping up.
Some industries that require on-site workers and customers, including hospitality and accommodation, experienced the worst job loss rates. Other industries such as tech, business services, and other similar fields were able to hold steady and avoid job losses altogether, as their work could be done remotely. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some industries have experienced record demand and significant growth throughout this recession. In West Michigan, the number of unemployed individuals has decreased significantly since peaking in April. Unemployment jumped by 156,688 people between March and April, but by August, 74% of those individuals had returned to work. Unfortunately, that still leaves the region with more than 65,000 unemployed people, which is roughly 41,000 more than the region had prior to the pandemic. Industry-level employment data by county will not be available until December. Until then, we can use data from the state to gain
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