How does Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and California compare to Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Ohio when it comes to job production and growth? These are the eight most populous states and four have Democratic governors and four have Republican governors. These states were similar in demographics and if group states have an advantage, it might be blue states slightly has they slightly more Asians and Whites citizens, who have traditionally higher income and their population was slightly younger.
What we found was that these GOP states outperformed their Democratic counterparts, and this matched national trend.
In December 2022, these GOP states had an average unemployment 3.4 percent versus 4.2 percent for Democrats states and in May of 2023, GOP states had an unemployment number 3.4 percent to Democrats 4.1 percent. One reason that GOP states outperformed their Democratic counterpart was that they opened earlier, and, in the winter of 2020, three of the four GOP states did not re-lockdown their economy and kept their schools open.
Another aspect is that all the GOP states by May 2023 replaced those jobs lost from the pandemic’s lockdown for an average of 104.94 percent jobs returned and only two of the four Democratic states recovered all those jobs and the average for those Democratic states was 100.23 percent. This simply demonstrated what we saw on a national average that GOP states outperformed their Democratic counterparts with lower unemployment and returned jobs quicker from the pandemic losses.
In 2022, these Republican states had 2.9 percent GDP growth compared to 2 percent for Democratic states. And in the first quarter of 2023, these four Republican states averaged GDP was 2.55 percent versus Democratic states at 1.15 percent.
Since 2020, these GOP states consistently outperformed their Democratic counterparts. Two of the four GOP states had lower unemployment than the national average, but all the Democratic states were above the national average. All the GOP states also were able to recover all their jobs from the pandemics whereas only two of the four Democratic states were able to do this. The lower unemployment simply supports why GOP states did recover all their jobs quicker.
Finally, these four GOP states had GDP growth more than double than their Democrats counterparts and this is also reflective in the better jobs report. And this continued a trend from the previous four quarters in which the Republican states outperformed their Democrat counterpart by a third more in economic growth.
The Donelson Files 