There have been plenty of jabs thrown between state governors since COVID began back in late February.  While COVID is still ongoing, we can compare state performance numbers at this point by looking at COVID deaths per 100,000 along with state unemployment rates.

In the table below we show state unemployment rates as of July 2020 along with COVID deaths per 100,000 people (as of 8/21/20).  As shown, Massachusetts currently has the highest unemployment rate at 16.1%, followed by Nevada at 14%, New Jersey at 13.8%, Pennsylvania at 13.7%, and New York and Hawaii at 13.1%.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York have some of the highest unemployment rates and by far the highest COVID deaths per 100,000, but Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii have high unemployment rates yet much lower COVID deaths per 100,000.  While New York and Hawaii have the exact same unemployment rates, New York has 169 COVID deaths per 100,000 while Hawaii is at just 3 deaths per 100,000.

States with the lowest unemployment rates have some of the lowest COVID deaths per 100,000.

If we provide a scatter plot of the data in the table above, you can see a pretty clear trend line between state unemployment rates and COVID deaths per 100,000:

Because of the nature of the virus, it’s obvious that states with higher population densities are more at risk.  New Jersey has the highest population density in the country, and it’s also the state with the highest number of COVID deaths per 100,000.  Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are the next most populated states in terms of people per square mile, and these states all have high COVID deaths per 100,000 as well.  States like Florida, Ohio, and California have managed to keep their COVID deaths per 100,000 under much better control so far even with pretty high population density.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options for our best research available.