Issue Brief: Unemployment Levels by Industry

March 31, 2022 / RERI Research Team / Tags: Issue Brief, Reports

Southwest Florida had a seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate of 3.8 percent in February 2020. In the following month the Covid-19 pandemic reached the country and the region. The mitigating policies designed to curtail the spread of the virus resulted in a spike in the unemployment rate, rising as high as 13.1 percent by April 2020. The region’s unemployment rate has recovered since this apex, reaching 4.0 percent by December 2021.

However, looking at simply the unemployment rate does not tell the complete story. After all, stay-at-home policies, supply chain disruptions, and changes in consumer preferences have impacted industries in various ways. Industries such as financial activities and professional and business services were much more equipped to weather these shocks over other industries such as leisure and hospitality, and education and health services.

In this issue brief, we take a more detailed look at how unemployment levels tracked over time between various industries in Southwest Florida. Data for this analysis is obtained from Emsi Burning Glass, a labor market analytics firm that gathers and integrates economic, demographic and education data from various government and private-sector sources and publishes county level datasets, kindly provided by FutureMakers Coalition.

Main findings from the Issue Brief include:

Unemployment levels in Southwest Florida were 6.9 percent higher in November 2021 compared to the February 2020 baseline.
Leisure and hospitality had the highest unemployment level in November 2021, up 64.9 percent compared to February 2020.

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Issue Brief: Unemployment Levels by Industry

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