Trump-supporting counties are doing better recovering jobs than those that voted for Biden

Counties around the U.S. where a majority of voters supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election are regaining their lost jobs under President Joe Biden more quickly than counties that voted in favor of the current president, according to a new analysis of labor data.

Through the end of the first quarter, Trump-supporting counties have regained nearly all the jobs they lost when the pandemic first slammed the economy in March of 2020, with employment just 0.3%, or 124,000 jobs, short of where it was prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the Economic Innovation Group found. Counties where a majority of residents voted for Biden had a deficit of 1.7 million jobs — 1.8% short of pre-pandemic levels — by the end of the first quarter of 2022.

That Trump-supporting counties are, at least by some measures, performing better under President Biden than those that voted for him may seem surprising, but it partly boils down to differences in the initial impact of the pandemic on Red and Blue states, said Kenan Fikri, director of research at the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan policy research organization. For instance, Biden-supporting counties — home to major economic powerhouses like New York City and San Francisco — lost far more jobs in the pandemic than cities in Trump counties.