The big thing you should know about economic recovery in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region for the week of February 22nd.
This Week’s Big Thing: maintaining perspective. This week GREATER MSP CEO Peter Frosch delivered a presentation on the path to recovery in a Critical Issues Forum for our fantastic regional partner, the Minneapolis Regional Chamber. In addition to delivering a rundown on the latest data and trends from the Regional Recovery Hub, Peter shared out some big picture takeaways on the MSP region’s path to recovery. One of the takeaways is the importance of maintaining perspective in this time of economic uncertainty. We can easily get discouraged by the momentous work ahead of us to recover and transform the regional economy. And yes, there is a lot of work to do (and yes, we’re up for the task). But let’s not lose track of the breadth of the economic challenge of recovery from COVID-19 and the scale of impact. The Minneapolis Saint Paul region is not alone in this work. Every metro region in the U.S. is going through recovery and facing similar challenges. In some areas of the economy MSP is further along in recovery than our peers. In others, MSP has more work to do. For this week’s take, I’m shining a light on the peer benchmarking that is included in the Recovery Hub to raise awareness of the collective challenge our country faces.
The pace of recovery differs across regions week to week. To understand relative improvement, we are comparing activity on a weekly and monthly basis for many of the metrics on the Recovery Hub for the MSP region’s peers, a set of regions selected based on demographic and economic characteristics. Peer regions were selected to be tracked in the Regional Indicators Dashboard, a set of indicators that track MSP’s long-term economic competitiveness.
COVID-19 Cases
In the third week of February, and for the third week in a row, COVID-19 cases saw week-over-week declines in average daily cases in every peer region. Total cases per capita remained highest in Southern peer regions like Charlotte and Atlanta, while the MSP region was in the middle of the peer set. MSP had 13 average daily cases per 100,000 residents while Charlotte had 35 average daily cases and Atlanta had 29 average daily cases. Both Austin and Dallas were excluded from analysis this week due to extreme weather events that impacted testing volumes. For perspective, the MSP region had the highest case volume per capita most of the month of December. Great progress has been made since that time, but we are still vulnerable to falling behind again if we do not stay vigilant.
COVID-19 Vaccination
COVID-19 vaccination is tracked at the state level as consistent metro-level data is more challenging collect week to week at this time. In the third week of February, the share of the population that had received at least one dose of vaccine varied a bit more than in previous weeks across peer states, ranging from 11.4% to 16%. Massachusetts and Colorado had the highest rate of vaccination, at 16% and 14.5%, respectively. Texas and Georgia had the lowest rate at 11.4%, due in part to severe weather and power outages posing challenges to vaccination efforts. Minnesota had the third highest share of population having received at least one vaccine dose among the peer set at 14.2%.
Employment
To compare employment recovery we are comparing employment for the most current month to the same month one year ago (pre-COVID-19). December data show that the MSP region’s total nonfarm employment is 7.9% below employment one year ago, the fourth largest recovery gap in our peer set with only Boston, San Francisco, and Portland having further to go in recovering job losses.
Air Travel
According to data tracked for major airports in MSP’s peer regions, MSP’s decline in passengers year-over-year in December is in the middle of the peer set, showing better recovery than Pittsburgh (PIT), Portland (PDX), Seattle (SEA) and San Francisco (SFO). Regions with airports seeing the strongest recovery include Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Atlanta (ATL), and Denver (DEN). All peer markets have considerable recovery gaps to fill in passenger activity from a year ago and it is expected that all markets should expect this recovery will take time to achieve. MSP expects that winter and spring 2021 recovery will be modest, with more meaningful recovery expected to occur in late spring and summer 2021.
Startup Funding
January 2021 data shows that the MSP region’s monthly venture capital deal activity is 5% lower than one year ago. This was, by far, the smallest year-over-year decrease in deals among the peer group. All other metros saw deal activity decrease by more than 18%, and Pittsburgh and Charlotte saw year-over-year decreases higher than 50%. The majority of peer metros saw decreases between 47% and 49%. Note that data is not available for the Austin, TX region.
Restaurant Bookings
In the third week of February, restaurant bookings increased in all peer regions except for Austin and Dallas, who are now seeing year-over-year booking activity declines larger than that of MSP and other eastern and Midwest peer regions, likely due to the severe weather that occurred last week. The most significant increase occurred in Charlotte, increasing its year-over-year booking activity by 19 percentage points. Following Denver, Atlanta and MSP had the largest increases in restaurant bookings of 18 and 17 percentage points respectively. One factor likely influencing the increase across peer regions was the celebration of Valentines’ Day, a day on which bookings increased far above levels seen since the beginning of the pandemic, across all peer regions.
Want to see the latest data and insights on economic recovery in MSP? Check out the MSP Regional Recovery Hub. The Hub is in beta, which means we are actively working to enhance the functionality to make sure it works for you. If you have any questions or feedback on the Recovery Hub, or would like to learn more about getting involved contact Amanda Taylor, Vice President of Research & Intelligence.