Jobs Gloom Grips Florida, Midwest Just 27 Days to Election Day
With the 2020 presidential campaign in full swing, Bloomberg News is assessing the state of the race in a series of stories every two weeks that examines the battleground states that will determine whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins the election.
If this were any other year, the job losses the U.S. has endured would likely make President Donald Trump a one-term president. But this is 2020, so now it’s just one factor in a litany of obstacles he is facing, especially in the battleground states he needs to win.
Trump holds a thin advantage with voters on his handling of the economy in general, as millions have already started to submit their ballots—many by mail for the first time.
Nevertheless, many voters in key states have lost their jobs or are in fear of doing so. And that’s just one issue on which Trump is facing headwinds. With weeks to go before the election, some voters are showing disdain for his Sept. 29 debate performance against Democrat Joe Biden and believe he brought the coronavirus on himself and his staff, giving him no late-campaign peaks in support.
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Jobs—or the lack of them—are often a driving factor for voters. Of the three incumbent presidents who lost re-election in the last seven decades—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush—all three faced unemployment rates between 7% and 8% heading into the election.
The September jobs report, the last before November’s election, showed unemployment at 7.9%. The degree to which voters blame the president for pandemic-driven job losses is unclear, but Trump’s declaration Tuesday to halt negotiations on more stimulus could influence them—with additional support to the jobless, local governments and small businesses now on hold.
From a bird’s eye view, the jobs market has recovered faster than many economists had originally expected. But economic progress in battleground states is far from even, and a still-rampant virus caps just how much the labor markets can recover.
In August, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan had unemployment rates higher than the nation as a whole.
Job-Loss Recovery in Key States
Jobs lost in March and April
Jobs recovered
GA
AZ
MI
NV
FL
PA
IA
WI
OH
MN
TX
NC
0
300
600
900
1,200K
Jobs lost in March and April
Jobs recovered
GA
AZ
MI
NV
FL
PA
IA
WI
OH
MN
TX
NC
0
300
600
900
1,200K
Jobs lost in March and April
Jobs recovered
GA
AZ
MI
NV
FL
PA
IA
WI
OH
MN
TX
NC
0
300
600
900
1,200K
One of the most dramatic examples of a battleground state in distress is Florida, a must-win state for either Trump or Biden—and where the candidates are in a dead heat.
In August, Florida’s jobless rate was below the national average. But in late September, Walt Disney Co. announced it would be laying off 6,390 employees at Walt Disney World in Orlando and other Florida sites.
About two weeks before, 1,136 job cuts were announced at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort, calling the pandemic’s impact on the industry “historic, swift and devastating.” Meanwhile, SeaWorld announced hundreds of furloughs would become permanent layoffs in Orlando and Tampa in early September.
Disney’s slumping resort business has reverberated across Orlando, which already had the highest jobless rate of any metro area in Florida as of August. Another Orlando resort and an airline baggage company at the airport announced hundreds of permanent layoffs last month.
A Census Bureau survey late last month showed one in every 20 small businesses in Florida expects to permanently close within the next six months, threatening further job losses. That’s consistent with the national rate.
U.S. airlines have already furloughed about 38,000 people since Oct. 1, after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on extending aid. The job cuts span several battleground states, including North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Nationally, the number of people who permanently lost their jobs is also increasing. In September, it hit a seven-year high, in a reversal of trend from the start of the pandemic, when a big majority of job losses were categorized as temporary. The number of long-term unemployed is also increasing, with the median duration of unemployment in the U.S. at its longest since 2012.
Trump’s illness underscores the unpredictability of the virus and its effect on the job market.
In battleground states like Florida and Arizona, the pace of new infections is down considerably from summer highs. Pennsylvania is seeing a rebound, with the seven-day average number of new cases higher than at any point since mid-May. And Minnesota and Wisconsin are seeing record numbers of new cases.
Trump campaigned in Minnesota two days before he announced he had tested positive for the virus. In Wisconsin, where Trump was scheduled to campaign this week — the seven-day average of new cases is about 14 times higher than during the presidential primary election there on April 7.
That means Americans are facing a fresh threat of job losses despite broader reopenings, when the U.S. economy is still 10.7 million jobs shy of where it was back in February.
More than 4.6 million voters have already cast their ballots, the majority of whom are in battleground states. That’s about 4 million more than were cast at the same point four years ago.
In states that track party affiliation, Democratic ballots are coming in much faster than Republicans’—by about a two-to-one ratio in Florida and three-to-one in North Carolina, according to University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, who tracks turnout at the U.S. Elections Project. Nationally, Democrats have requested about 9 million more mail-in ballots than Republicans.
2020 Voters Cast Votes Early in Many Swing States
Share of 2020 early vote to 2016
total turnout
2020 mail ballots returned as a share of the
total requested
WI
WI
39%
16%
MN
24%
MN
11%
NC
NC
8%
30%
MI
MI
16%
7%
OH
OH
20%
6%
11%
FL
FL
6%
GA
GA
5%
16%
2%
PA
PA
0.6%
0.2%
IA
IA
0.08%
Share of 2020 early vote to
2016 total turnout
2020 mail ballots returned as a share of
the total requested
WI
WI
39%
16%
MN
24%
MN
11%
NC
NC
8%
30%
MI
MI
16%
7%
OH
OH
20%
6%
11%
FL
FL
6%
GA
GA
5%
16%
2%
PA
PA
0.6%
0.2%
IA
IA
0.08%
Share of 2020 early
vote to 2016 total
turnout
2020 mail ballots returned as a
share of the total requested
39%
WI
WI
16%
24%
MN
MN
11%
8%
30%
NC
NC
16%
MI
MI
7%
20%
OH
OH
6%
11%
6%
FL
FL
5%
16%
GA
GA
2%
0.6%
PA
PA
0.2%
IA
IA
0.08%
Furthermore, while the unemployment rate dropped in September, so did the participation rate. Many Americans dropped out of the labor market entirely, in some cases that meant leaving their jobs—perhaps due to childcare reasons amid virtual schooling in many districts across the country—and in others, it meant stopping looking for work.
The decrease was particularly pronounced among women, a key voting bloc in the upcoming election. Polls show women are increasingly moving away from Trump.
Nevada, which tied with Hawaii for the steepest economic contraction among all states in the April-June period, has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. The rate, at 13.2%, has improved from its peak of 30.1% in April, but many of those jobs are not coming back. About 10 of every 1,000 businesses in the state had permanently closed since March 1, according to data from Yelp Inc.
Unemployment Rate by State
One in every 15 Nevada small businesses expect to close in the next six months, according to a Census survey in late September.
In Ohio and Michigan, both manufacturing giants, unemployment was little changed from the month prior.
But the latest national jobs report, which included data for September, bodes well for manufacturing employment. Jobs in the sector grew by 66,000 from the prior month, nearly double the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists ahead of the report. Hiring momentum at factories could give Trump the extra boost he needs to close the narrow polling gap in the hotly-contested state of Ohio.