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Arizona’s economy was starting to recover from the pandemic in the early part of the summer, but University of Arizona economists say it has slowed again during August and September.
“I think we are going to see gradual improvement in the state’s economy and we should be, I think back to pre-pandemic levels sometime in the second half of 2021,”said George Hammond, director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management.
Before the pandemic began, Arizona’s economy was going strong with some of the strongest growth in the country.
One indicator of the economy is unemployment. In Arizona there are two sets of numbers to look at: regular unemployment and pandemic unemployment (PUA).
Pandemic unemployment is the federal program that covers the self-employed and those in the gig economy. Normally, they are not eligible for unemployment benefits.
Regular unemployment numbers have slowly drifted down recently, but that is not the case for pandemic unemployment.
Hammond said the PUA numbers can be a little difficult to read because there is a large amount of fraud in that system. But he said they are still an indicator.
“What I think they are telling us is that the impact of the pandemic has been pretty severe on the self-employed,” Hammond said.
During the last full week of September, 96,000 people in Arizona received unemployment payments, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security.
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