Projected unemployment rates in swing states for Election Day: IHS Markit

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins Kristin Myers to discuss the projected unemployment rates in swing states for Election Day, according to IHS Markit.

Video Transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: A new data from IHS Markit is showing what the unemployment levels could look like in swing states. So for more on that and its potential impact, we have Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman. So, Rick, talk us through what the report was finding for the unemployment levels across the country.

RICK NEWMAN: So this-- these are forecasts for all 50 states, the total decline in employment that IHS thinks is going to be the case in the first quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier. So it's basically from right before the coronavirus impact one year forward. And I-- you know, I look at all this through a political lens. And so I'm covering the campaign, and I just pulled out the swing states. That's six or eight or maybe 10 states that are going to determine who wins this year. And projections look very bad in a few very important states.

So I'm just looking at the list here. Nevada is the worst state overall. That is leaning Democrats, but that is a swing state. They're-- they're expected to have a 21% decline in total employment from 2020 to 2021, and that does cover the, you know, the period of-- of the election on November 3. Michigan, third worst in terms of total job losses at a decline of about 17%. Florida also down about 17%.

And then the 10th worst is Arizona, down about 16%. So Joe Biden looks pretty good in all four of those states. And if voters, when they go to vote on November 3, if they're voting on the economy and they're basically just saying, I'm-- I'm going to punish the president for the state of the economy and see if we can't get somebody else new in here, that could turn it in Joe Biden's favor, those four states alone.

KRISTIN MYERS: So how do their unemployment levels, those projections, compare with some of the projections from the rest of the US? Are they much, much worse, much better--

RICK NEWMAN: So for those four states alone, those are worse than overall. The average among all 50 states is about a 15% decline in-- in total job numbers. That's terrible. I mean, you know, 15% decline is worse than anything we saw in the Great Recession back in-- from 2007 to 2009. And by all standard measures, I mean, the economy is just violently working against President Trump at this point. Now, a lot of people think because he's such an unusual politician, the normal rules don't apply to him and that he could somehow sort of pull a rabbit out of a hat here and win re-election, despite a terrible economy.

And, you know, to be fair to Trump, the coronavirus is not his fault, and the recession that came from all these business closures is not his fault, either. But I'm not sure voters think a lot about whether the president deserves the blame or not for a bad economy. A lot of the time, they just say, it's his-- he's the guy on the watch, and we're going to hold him responsible. We have not had a president win re-election in the middle of a recession since 1900. That's 120 years ago by my math.

KRISTIN MYERS: So do you actually think, though, that this will kind of hand a-- a victory to-- to Joe Biden? Do you think that, you know, in these swing states that-- that people that are looking at it and saying, you know what, the Democrats are actually doing this the right way and-- and Republicans are not?

RICK NEWMAN: It certainly could, Kristin, because in 2016, Trump won most of the swing states. I mean, that was a big surprise in 2016, and the vote margin was incredibly close in several of them. Wisconsin, for example, Michigan also, I think it was one percentage point or less in those states. So it's not going to take many-- many swing voters, you know, the undecideds or the people who might be persuaded to vote one way or the other to tip to the other side and vote against Trump.

The real question for this election-- I mean, if this is-- if this is a referendum on the economy, then Trump loses. If it's-- if it's about something else, which it could be, then Trump wins. And, you know, you always have to put this caveat out there. I mean, given-- look what we're-- we're covering right now with all these riots nobody anticipated. You know, we're now three simultaneous crises going on in the United States. Hard to predict how this is all going to foment over the next five months as people are making up their minds.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, well, we'll have to wait until November obviously to see how things go there. But, Rick Newman, thank you so much.

RICK NEWMAN: See you.