Greater economic support would have softened the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor markets across the states

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen over one million deaths and millions of infections in the US since early 2020. In new research, Theologos Dergiades, Costas Milas and Theodore Panagiotidis find that many of the measures aimed at tackling the pandemic, such as mask-wearing and social distancing also had effects on unemployment in the states. They write interventions like lockdowns cause a spike in unemployment insurance claims for six weeks from when they begin and that economic support measures can help to mitigate these effects. They conclude that better coordination between economic support policies and interventions like mask wearing could have further reduced the increase in pandemic-related unemployment insurance claims.