Did Republican-Led States Perform Better at Protecting Jobs Against COVID-19 in the United States?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the short-term effects of partisan control by state governments on employment during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Specifically, we examined whether Republican control of the state government was associated with lower unemployment rates and higher employment-to-population ratios. Our results revealed that party control exerted a weak effect but that the interaction with the number of pandemic-related deaths had a strong negative (positive) impact on unemployment rates (employment-to-population ratios). The moderation effect of our state partisan control variables supports the conclusion that Republican-led states produced better employment outcomes against the pandemic.KEYWORDS: COVID-19partisanrepublican party controlunemployment rateemployment-to-population ratioJEL CLASSIFICATION: H75I10J21 Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 We also explored the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by employing the number of confirmed cases as an indicator of its severity. However, we could not derive a definitive result. It is possible that the state authorities had a more pronounced reaction to death tolls than to confirmed case numbers, perhaps because of the media's strong emphasis on fatalities. State leaders may set restrictions based on death counts. While this study primarily focuses on the empirical results related to the number of deaths, our complete empirical results using infection data are available upon request.Additional informationFundingThis work is supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022S1A3A2A0208958).