What is the Tradeoff between COVID-19 and Economic Recovery?

Abstract

Since July 2019, Iowa has lost 3.4% of its labor force and 3.3% of its employment. Nationally, employment is 3.7% below the July 2019 level, and so Iowa is doing slightly better on employment loss. However, the national labor force has fallen only 1.4% and in that way Iowa has performed much worse than the nation on labor force participation. That said, there has been a surge in Iowa’s labor force participation from June 2021 to July 2021 as the two-year decrease in labor force participation was -4.7% in June; and thus, there was a substantial improvement in Iowa’s labor force participation over the past month.