Evolving Economy - COVID 2020 Q2 Release Notes

INTRODUCTION

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic represent a structural shift to the U.S. economy. For some types of analysis, existing 2018 data and forthcoming 2019 data are not ideal for modeling 2020 events and activities without edits to the model and/or analysis set-up. Accordingly, IMPLAN has used the best publicly available data from the second quarter of 2020 to produce an IMPLAN dataset (U.S., state, county, congressional district, and zip code models) meant to represent the pandemic-altered 2020 U.S. economy.

DATA DETAILS

The dataset has the same data points and capabilities as regular annual IMPLAN data. The dataset is annualized and seasonally adjusted, meant to represent the 2020 economy as if the second quarter of 2020 was representative of the entirety of the year 2020. Because of this, you can compare 2018 levels to the Evolving Economy - COVID 2020-Q2 Data to see differences in your Region. 

To produce this dataset, our Data Team relied on a smaller set of source data points to project the latest regular annual IMPLAN data to 2020. This is because many of our usual sources will not have 2020 data available until the end of 2021. By virtue of using these data, the COVID 2020-Q2 Data will involve significant differences from the 2018 data including changes in Output, Employment, Value Added, Industry Spending, Household Spending, taxes, transfers, and Output per worker, all of which will affect multipliers and your results.   

Data sources for the projection: 

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Current Employment Statistics program, which provides timely and detailed information on changes in industry employment and compensation: 
• National: https://www.bls.gov/ces/ 
• State: https://www.bls.gov/sae/ 
• BLS data on labor productivity: https://www.bls.gov/lpc/ 
• Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) aggregate preliminary data on components of GDP and components of Value Added: https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product 

DATA LIMITATIONS

Because this dataset uses the available quarterly data, it is not nearly as robust as IMPLAN’s annual datasets. None of the source data utilized contained any detail on agriculture or tenant-occupied housing, so the rates for these Industries were applied evenly across the economy.

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Written September 16, 2020

Updated October 1, 2020