Red and Blue States of Recovery

Joe Biden’s ‘K-shaped’ economy is made in the lockdown states

WSJ editorial.

"The story that the media haven’t told is that states that have maintained longer and stricter business restrictions have been slower to recover. The unemployment rate in September was 12.6% in Nevada, 11% in California, 10.5% in Rhode Island, 10.2% in Illinois, and 9.7% in New York compared to 6.7% in Arizona, 6.4% in Georgia, 5.4% in Wisconsin and 5% in Utah.

New York added 100,000 jobs last month as Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally let dine-in restaurants and gyms in New York City reopen at limited capacity. But 363,000 workers also dropped out of the labor force, which was the biggest driver in the state’s 2.8-point decline in unemployment. New Jersey’s unemployment rate fell to 6.7% from 11.1%, but that's also largely because 229,000 workers left the labor force. The main cause of what Joe Biden calls the “K-shaped recovery” are Democratic governors that shut down their economies."