In addition to its health impact, COVID-19 is leading to unprecedented economic disruption. On this page we collect pieces by CROWE researchers tracking and analyzing the economic impact of COVID-19 in Wisconsin and around the world.
Research Reports
- The Wisconsin Economic and Mental Health Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic (Nov 12, 2020)
- Reopening Wisconsin Current Economic and Health Indexes , Regional Health and Economic Factors
COVID-19 Data Briefs
- Business Formation during the COVID-19 Pandemic Full Data Brief, Summary
- Wisconsin’s labor market and COVID-19 Full Data Brief, Summary
- The Wisconsin Economy During COVID-19: Lockdown and Reopening Full Data Brief, Summary
- The COVID-19 Recovery Has Stalled Full Data Brief, Summary
- The Economic Impact of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling Invalidating the State’s Safer at Home Order Full Data Brief, Summary
- The Effects of COVID-19 on WI Workers & Firms Full Data Brief, Summary
- Protest Dynamics: Evidence from Foot Traffic Data Full Data Brief, Summary
- Reopening the Economy: Early Evidence from Georgia and Wisconsin Full data brief, Summary
- Measuring Economic Activity using Foot-Traffic Data Full Data Brief, Summary
- Measuring proximity to others in the workplace Full Data Brief, Summary
- Impact of State-wide Stay at Home Orders Full Data Brief, Summary
- Consumer Responses to the Pandemic Full Data Brief, Summary
- Air-Traffic as a Proxy for Economic Activity in the Transportation Sector Full Data Brief, Summary
- Economic Impact of COVID-19 on the Chinese Economy Full Data Brief, Summary
- Unemployment Benefits under the Federal COVID-19 Relief Package Full Data Brief, Summary
- Geographic Distribution of Workers Most at Risk Economically Full Data Brief, Summary
- Forecasting Initial Unemployment Claims using Google Searches Full Data Brief, Summary
- Growth of Initial Unemployment Claims across States Full Data Brief, Summary
Quick Links
CROWE EVENTS and Outreach 2020 (Economic Impact of COVID-19)
| Date | Event | Speaker(s) | Presentation Title/Topic | Presentation Materials and links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 9, 2020 | Rotary Club of Madison: Online event |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
Reflections on Wisconsin’s Economy | ||
| November 18, 2020 | Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) |
Dr. John Raymond
|
Public Health and Economic Update | ||
| Nov 10, 2020 | The UW Now Livestream and Q & A |
moderated by Mike Knetter |
Our Economic Possibilities | ||
| Sep 28 to Oct 21, 2020 | CROWE Webinar Series |
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Northwestern
Lee Ohanian, UCLA Brian Riedl, Manhattan Institute Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago Alan Blinder, Princeton moderated by Noah Williams |
Economic Issues in the 2020 Election and Beyond | ||
| Sep 24, 2020 |
WisBusiness Podcast |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
CROWE Research on tracking the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic |
||
| August 12, 2020 | Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) webinar |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
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| July 29, 2020 | Wisconsin Bankers Association (WBA) Coronavirus Management Series |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
Wisconsin's COVID-19 Economic Impact | ||
| July 21, 2020 | Rotary Club of Milwaukee |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
Economic Impact of COVID-19 |
||
| June 17, 2020 |
CARW Thought Leadership Series |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
The Macroeconomic Outlook | ||
| May 27, 2020 |
Noah Williams, CROWE Director |
State Senate Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform |
|
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| May 12, 2020 | The UW Now Livestream and Q & A |
moderated by Mike Knetter |
Economic Effects of COVID-19 | ||
| April 29, 2020: | Live Web Discussion |
The Economic Impact of COVID-19 |
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Media Mentions
Dec 23, 2020: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quotes Prof Williams in “So much for holiday cheer. Thousands of Wisconsinites still waiting in unemployment backlog“.
Dec 10, 2020: Noah Williams’ piece, “State Election, National Effects” in City Journal.
Dec 2, 2020: “October unemployment rates declined in eight of Wisconsin’s 72 counties over the month, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics”. Read the post from wisbusiness.com in which Prof Noah Williams’ explains this decline in October unemployment rates here
Nov 30, 2020: “UW-Madison economist Noah Williams told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber on Monday that Wisconsin’s bounceback since the worst of the coronavirus this spring is a story for other states to hear. ” Read the full article here
Oct 9, 2020: CROWE’s research on foot-traffic and labor markets featured in Green Bay Press Gazette’s article on why experts worry that the soaring COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin could sink the state’s economic recovery. Read the article here
Oct 8, 2020: “Pay workers for finding a job, not for staying unemployed…..Instead of encouraging unemployed workers to hope for a return to a job that may no longer exist, policymakers should help in the reallocation process”- writes Noah Williams in City Journal. Read the full article “Bonus Army” in which Williams writes about ways in which public policy can help the unemployed to get back to work.
Sep 16, 2020: Read what CROWE’s director, Prof Williams and other experts say about the increased pressure on local and federal government officials to make extensive budget cuts because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Badger Herald‘s piece “UW to face economic fallout in 2021 fiscal year due to COVID-19″.
“Corona-nomics How is the economy faring under extraordinary stress?” In the Fall 2020 issue of UW-Madison’s alumni magazine, OnWisconsin, CROWE Director Prof Noah Williams says “There was a lot of damage happening, and if we didn’t post frequently, we were afraid we’d miss a lot of what was going on.”… Read the story here
Aug 29, 2020: “Why Joe Biden’s tax plan will bring on a more sluggish US economy”. New York Post ran Noah Williams’s City Journal article on Biden’s Tax Plan as an opinion piece. Read it here.
Aug 25, 2020: “Back to Low Growth: The impact of Joe Biden’s tax plan would be less income across the spectrum and a sluggish economy”, writes Noah Williams in City Journal. Read the full article here and Zhigang Ge’s quantitative study cited in the article here. A commentary is posted here via Manhattan Institute.
July 31, 2020: “What Comes Next After An Historic Drop In The US Economy?” Listen to Noah Williams on Wisconsin Public Radio.
July 22, 2020: WisBusiness.com summarizes Noah Williams’s talk at Rotary Club of Milwaukee. Read it here. Also read Williams’s edited headline tweet.
July 21, 2020: “As Coronavirus Spreads, Wisconsin’s Economic Recovery Haults, Mimicking Other States’ Patterns” Read article on Noah Williams’s talk at Rotary Club of Milwaukee published by SpectrumNEWS1
June 24, 2020: Wisconsin Spotlight highlights CROWE’s research in “Recovering from the Lockdown” Read more
June 1, 2020: Wisconsin Business Voice Video Series: UW-Madison Professor & Director of Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE), Noah Williams discussed the economic impacts of COVID-19 in Wisconsin and our current unemployment status. Watch here
May 27, 2020: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quotes Noah Williams in “Unpaid unemployment claims top 728,000 as state Senate holds hearings on backlog” Read more
May 21, 2020: ABC News quotes Noah Williams in “Employers struggle to compete with $600 unemployment payments” Read more
May 13, 2020: WisBusiness.com summarizes The UW Now Expert Panel discussion on the Economic Effects of COVID-19 –“As Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is estimated to exceed 20 percent based on initial unemployment claims, rural northern parts of the state are seeing a larger impact.” Read more
May 13, 2020: “UW-Madison’s Economists: 2022 is the Target for Return Normalcy in these Key Areas” — Mike Semmann, Executive VP/COO, Wisconsin Banker’s Association, summarizes the highlights of The UW Now Expert Panel discussion on the Economic Effects of COVID-19 in a rapid fire Q & A format. Read it here
May 12, 2020: City Journal “Policymakers should move toward a phased-in, regional approach to re-openings—and pay attention not only to infections but also unemployment.” – says Noah Williams in “Economic Well-being Matters, Too”. Read More
May 9, 2020: CNBC cites Noah Williams in an article headlined “It pays to stay unemployed. That might be a good thing” Read More
May 1, 2020: CROWE Web discussion covered by SPECTRUM NEWS1 in “How Coronavirus Has Affected Wisconsin’s Economy,” Read more
April 29, 2020: CROWE Web discussion covered by The Badger Herald in “UW economist explains state of Wisconsin economy during COVID-19 pandemic.” Read more
April 26, 2020: CNN Tonight featured an interview with Noah Williams in a story “Wisconsin’s economy hit hard by the coronavirus” by @miguelmarquez highlighting the difficulties people are facing. Watch it here.
April 23, 2020: The New York Times cites Noah Williams’s work in an article headlined “The $600 Unemployment Booster Shot, State by State” . Read more
April 18, 2020: PBS Wisconsin cites Noah Williams in an article headlined “Unemployment Claims Soar as COVID-19 Continues to Threaten Wisconsin’s Economy” Read More
April 16, 2020: The Economist cites Noah Williams’s work in an article that appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline “Picking off the weak”. Read more
April 10, 2020: The Daily Cardinal cites Noah Williams in “Wisconsin’s unemployment rate skyrockets ….” Read more
April 9, 2020: BizTimes Milwaukee Business News cites Kim Ruhl’s report in an article headlined “Wisconsin unemployment claims dropped last week, but there’s little room to celebrate” Read more
April 8, 2020: Green Bay Press-Gazette cites Noah Williams’s Foot-traffic data in “How many visitors did Wisconsin businesses lose because of the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing? Report says 52% drop in foot traffic” Read more
April 2, 2020: City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research featured Noah Williams’s article “Thinking Past the Crisis- Federal expansion of jobless benefits is necessary but may impede recovery”. Read more
April 1, 2020: “Wisconsin unemployment rate could hit record high in the next week, economist says”. Watch Noah’s interview with @tmj4
CROWE Data Briefs- Quick Look
Updated Nov 20, 2020 (first July 24, 2020)
Wisconsin’s labor market and COVID-19
This brief reports labor-market indicators for Wisconsin to demonstrate the effects of COVID-19 on labor supply and demand. This report is part of a larger effort at CROWE to document and analyze the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Updated Oct 23, 2020 (first posted June 11, 2020)
The Wisconsin Economy During COVID-19: Lockdown and Reopening
Abstract
This brief summarizes data on the Wisconsin economy since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, I analyze economic activity using foot traffic at commercial locations around the state.
Since the last update on October 2 (reflecting data through September 30), Wisconsin has experienced a slight rebound in economic activity. While activity had slumped beginning in early September, a recovery began in late September and continued through mid-October. Nonetheless, the overall picture of the last several months has been one of relative stagnation, with overall foot traffic measures relatively unchanged between mid-July and late October.
Over the last three weeks, overall foot traffic from SafeGraph data has risen by about 6 percentage points, but this only returns the indicators to levels from July, and still down 28% year-over-year.
The Madison metro area continues to lag activity in the rest of the state and remains more 40% down from a year ago. The is a consequence of the continued relative closure of UW-Madison and absence of campus events, along with relatively tighter public health guidelines.
Data from the small business sector shows a more sustained downward trend, with employment down by about 10 percentage points since the end of August, and about 14 percentage points in the food and drink sector. Especially notable in the food and drink sector has been the gap that’s opened between open locations and employment. This reflects a substantial reduction in staffing at those establishments that have been able to remain open in this era of reduced capacity and social distancing.
updated Sep 25, 2020 (first posted June 11, 2020)
Business Formation during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread job losses, and in addition there is timely and high-frequency data that shows a significant disruption in early-stage business formation. We find that changes in employment and labor force participation rates play a fairly limited role in accounting for business formation in “normal” times. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, labor market disruptions of a truly unprecedented magnitude play a far more prominent role in explaining the collapse of business formation in the US. One of our concerns is that a prolonged decline in the labor market may have a scarring effect on business formation.
This update to the “Business Formation during the COVID-19 Pandemic” report includes the business formation statistics from calendar weeks 39 through 42 and the state-level labor market data for the month of September. Labor market conditions and business applications are linked using the same accounting approach as the original report and the four previous updates. Two broad trends characterize the evolution of business formation since our previous update. First, the strength of the rebound is gradually losing steam, but continues above trend compared to previous years. The recovery is broad-based in that applications exceed the levels of prior years in virtually every state. Moreover, the recovery encompasses the more promising “high-propensity” applications. Thanks to this fairly sustained uptick in applications the cumulative number of applications through week 42 is exceeding comparable year-to-date numbers in previous years by a significant margin. Barring a sharp contraction in the flow of applications later this year, full-year totals are likely to exceed the levels from prior years. Second, the rise in applications can be attributed to a sustained rise in the number of applications per employed worker, rather than significant improvements in local labor markets. In fact, the labor force participation and employment rates for September continue to be weak by historical standards, but marginally improved compared to August. With the exception of Michigan and Indiana, all Midwestern states made gains in the employment rate of approximately one percentage point. The picture for the labor force participation rate is more mixed: Wisconsin’s roughly returned to 2019 levels while Iowa’s gap widened by an additional 0.6 points to -8.5 percent compared to the September rate in 2019.
For a more detailed discussion of the underlying methodology and data sources, the interested reader may want to review the original report.
July 24, 2020
The COVID-19 Recovery Has Stalled
After a rapid and deep crash with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, economic activity rebounded sharply from mid-April through the end of June across the country. However activity has fallen from its peaks in early July and has been flat over the past ten days or so, roughly in line with the spread of the virus and the reimposition of more stringent public health restrictions in different locations. In many states economic activity by mid-July was back where it was roughly one month earlier, if not lower.
July 3, 2020
The Economic Impact of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling Invalidating the State’s Safer at Home Order
Using several real-time economic measures, this brief provides evidence suggesting a modestly positive impact of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling invalidating the state’s Safer at Home order on economic activity. In two weeks following the ruling, relative to states where non-essential businesses were shut down, Wisconsin experienced a larger increase in the number of small businesses open (7.8 ppts), net revenue for small businesses (4.6 ppts), employment of low-income workers (0.8 ppts), earnings of low-income workers (1.6 ppts), individual mobility as measured by GPS data on time spent outside residential locations (3.2 ppts) and consumer credit/debit card spending (3.1 ppts).
Two weeks after the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated the state’s Safer at Home order on May 13, 2020: (1) the number of small businesses open increased by 9.9 percentage points, which is 7.8 percentage points larger than its synthetic control; (2) time spent at retail and recreation locations increased by 17 percentage points for Wisconsinites, which is 13.3 percentage points more than their counterparts in the synthetic control.
updated June 26, 2020 (first posted March 24, 2020)
The effects of COVID-19 on Wisconsin’s workers and firms
ESTIMATED WISCONSIN UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
With the repeal of the Safer at Home order, there are likely significant flows of people out of unemployment and back to work. Daily data on these workers is not available. Without a measure of this worker flow, our estimated rate will not track the true rate very well. For this reason, we have stopped updating the unemployment rate.
MARKET CAPITALIZATION OF WISCONSIN'S PUBLIC FIRMS
June 26, 2020
Protest Dynamics: Evidence from Foot Traffic Data
Following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, there have been substantial protests in many cities around the country, and indeed around the world. In this brief I use foot traffic data to analyze the dynamics of the protests at different locations around the United States. In both Minneapolis and Washington, DC, I find protests growing in scale to a peak, and diminishing thereafter. Since early June, overall activity has dropped substantially in the zip code in Minneapolis that was at the heart of the protests, likely due to sustained damage at area businesses. In Washington, protest activity around the White House started later, growing to a peak on June 6. Activity has declined since then, but remains elevated relative to April and May, and has spiked on weekends. Overall, I find that the protests led to isolated spikes in activity at particular locations. But the protests did not substantially impact overall measures of activity in the metro areas where they took place.
Updated May 29, 2020 (first posted May 14, 2020)
Reopening the Economy: Early Evidence from Georgia and Wisconsin
While the data only covers the first ten days after the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, there was a noticeable increase in overall activity, which gained 7.5 percentage points in the past two weeks, closing 16% of the year-over-year gap. The gains were particularly notable in bars (up 75%) and full service restaurants (up 64%) last weekend relative to the weekend before the decision. Total activity still remained 38% below 2019 levels, but is well up from the 59% declines in mid-April, and the recent gains suggest a growing rebound. This is particularly true in the hardest hit sector of accommodations and food, such as hotels (up 11 points, but still down 60% from 2019) and full service restaurants (up 16 points, but still down 48% from 2019).
Measuring proximity to others in the workplace
Most proposals to “reopen” the economy suggest a staged reopening, beginning with relatively low-risk sectors. We score industries by the need for workers to be proximate to others and find that the healthcare industry has the highest score, followed by hospitality and food service. Manufacturing and retail are intermediate and the professional and management industries have relatively low score.
Updated May 6, 2020 (first posted April 2, 2020)
Measuring Wisconsin Economic Activity Using Foot Traffic Data
“Economic activity in Wisconsin, as measured by foot traffic data, has recovered slightly over the past two weeks. Activity fell sharply though March and early April, hitting a low of a 60% drop year-over-year for the week of April 12. However there has been a partial recovery over the last two weeks, with an easing of some restrictions and a reduction in social distancing, with total activity down 45% for the week ending May 2. Retail trade led the recovery, going from down 44% the week of April 12 to down 22% last week. There was also modest recovery in accommodation and food services, health care, and finance, all of which saw relative gains of 10-15 percentage points over the past two weeks. But even with this recent rebound, activity remains far below 2019 levels.”
The fraction of Wisconsinites at home all day increased by about 20 percentage points in March (Level). A comparison with its synthetic control, a weighted average of states without a stay-at-home order by the end of the month, suggests that about 20% of the increase (4 percentage points) can be attributed to the Safer at Home order (Difference). Junjie Guo, April 29, 2020.
Consumer Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Updated April 23, 2020 (first posted April 16, 2020)
As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the United States, consumers have changed their spending habits dramatically. There has been a sharp drop in consumption, but also a large shift: grocery spending has risen while restaurant and especially travel spending has fallen sharply. The consumption decline overall was cushioned by increasing on-line sales. In Wisconsin, total sales were down 15% at the end of March, but in-store sales were down 30%, with online sales up 20%. Noah Williams, April 23, 2020
