Hawkeye Reporter

When it comes to the economic recovery in the wake of COVID-19, Iowa ranks first among U.S. states as the country recovers from the pandemic. 

Researchers from Drexel University, Towson University, Yale University, Howard University and SUNY Buffalo ranked each state in three categories, including health, economy and labor, and leisure and travel, according to the Hawkeye Reporter. Amid this report, Gov. Kim Reynolds has touted the state’s recovery and announced the state would remove federal unemployment benefits ahead of the September expiration to drive more people back to work.  

“Today, we have more job openings than we have people on unemployment,” the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported Reynolds as saying. “So why would we allow the federal government to hamper our economic recovery by paying potential workers to stay home?”

According to a Wallethub report, researchers found Iowa ranked first among economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic. 

The economy will benefit as more and more Iowans are vaccinated, according to Joanne Song McLaughlin, director of undergraduate studies and an associate professor in the Department of Economics at University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

“The root cause of this pandemic recession is COVID-19, and the vaccine rollout is addressing this root cause,” she said in the Wallethub report.

In another study, researchers at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy found that Iowa is one of 14 states to report an increase in gross domestic product from 2019 to 2021. According to the study, every state saw its economy shrink during the pandemic, while changes during the first quarter of 2021 varied from state to state, with Iowa among the states with positive GDP growth. 

“Iowa’s GDP growth continues to outpace the national average,” Reynolds said in a Tweet recently. 

During this period, Iowa’s GDP grew by 1.8%, according to the University of New Hampshire study. Utah topped the list with GDP growth of 4% during that period. 

Researchers also noted that Iowa’s unemployment rate stood at 3.9% in May. The University of New Hampshire study found the highest unemployment rates in Hawaii, 8.1%, and New Mexico, 8%. 

The University of New Hampshire study also found that Iowa’s employment-to-population ratio dropped from 69% before the pandemic to 61.4% in April 2020. The ratio shows the percentage of the state’s population that is employed. The researchers found that the ratio had rebounded to 63.8% by May 2021, according to the study.