Federal economic data shows the unemployment rate in Ellis County at its highest in the last 20 years.
The data comes from the Economic Research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and shows that as of May 2020, the Ellis County unemployment rate stood at 10.1%, only a fraction of a percent down from the county’s highest 20-year record of 10.8% just the month before.
The spike abruptly reverses an eleven-year trend that saw ever-improving employment numbers following the economic crisis of 2008. By June 2009, the unemployment rate had reached 9% but began falling sharply every year until reaching a low of 2.7% by December of last year.
Despite the high rate, the county is faring a little better than the nation overall as the U.S. unemployment rate as of May rose to 13.3%. This rate, even with the most optimistic predictions for a recovery, places the U.S. as well as Ellis County in the middle of an economic recession according to the research of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a non-profit research organization.
Even worse, the Federal Government admits that the official unemployment rate is flawed due to an accounting error and more realistically stands at 16% for the nation overall, or one in every six people.
For comparison, neighboring Dallas County is seeing a slightly higher 12.8% unemployment rate as of May 2020, and Tarrant County is at 12.9%.
Navarro County is a little better off at 9.9%, as is Hill County at 10.3%.
The arrival of the novel coronavirus and the pandemic response measures enacted to slow its spread are major causes for the sudden spike in unemployment, but the continuing trade dispute between the U.S. and China and a general slowing of the economy as part of the economic cycle prior to the advent of the disease may have set the stage for the pandemic response to create such a surge in people being forced out of work.