Avoyelles COVID stats offer good and bad news

Fewer Avoyelles Parish workers are filing new claims for unemployment --but there are still over 200 more than the week before COVID hit.

Despite two weeks of anti-COVID emergency restrictions and business closures, Avoyelles Parish's parishwide sales taxes and DMV sales taxes earned more in March than was collected in February -- but less than the same time last year.

Avoyelles Parish residents are doing a better job of social distancing than the state average -- but still gets a "D" compared to the Pelican State's "F."

Cell phone tracking indicates Avoyelles residents have not increased going to retail stores or to the supermarkets and pharmacies from mid-April to early-March, but had significantly increased mobility to work.

These snapshots of statistics are included in the latest LSUA "Cenla Economic Dashboard" report by Dr.Randall Dupont, dean of LSUA's College of Business.

Statistics are subject to a variety of interpretations.This article will not seek to present one interpretation over another, but merely to present the findings of the researcher.

HOW ARE WE DOING?

One thing everyone wants to know is "how are we doing" compared to everyone else. Dupont's report provides a part to satisfy that curiosity.

Again, whether the results are as negative as the "grade" indicates is a matter of opinion. In the area of "social distancing," Avoyelles' grade for April 26 was a D+. In the report released May 18, which looked at data for May 15, the parish had slipped to a "D." The state overall had an"F," as did Avoyelles' larger north and south neighbors, Rapides and St. Landry.

In that same vein, the May 18 dashboard report looked again at Google's cell phone mobility records to determine how many people were really staying home during "stay at home."

Using mobility on Feb.16 as the baseline for comparison, Avoyelles residents went to retail stores 16 percent less on May 2 than they did on Feb. 16 but to the grocery/pharmacy 5 percent more. Those figures are identical to Google's mobility records for April 11.

In another statistic that may be bad or may be good, mobility to workplace was 27 percent lower on April 11 than on Feb. 16 and only 16 percent lower than on May 2. Workplace mobility was 32 percent less on March 29.

Does it mean people got tired of "work from home" and went back to "work at work," or is it a positive sign that the economy is getting better and people who were laid off were able to go back to work.

VULNERABILITY

A new statistic in the dashboard measures community economic vulnerability.

Dupont said the vulnerabilty index is a "measurement of the negative impact that the coronavirus crisis can have on employment based upon a region’s mix of industries."

The "average" score is 100, which represents the average job loss expected in the nation from COVID-related factors.

In this area, Allen Parish is the most vulnerable with a score of 164, ranking 56th out of 3,141 counties/parishes in the U.S., from most to lease vulnerable. Avoyelles had a vulnerability score of 107, earning a national rank of 504.Grant and Concordia both scored 99 -- right at average-- with rankings of 841 and 838, respectively.

While there may be other factors involved, the one thing all four of those parishes have in common is a casino -- the Paragon Casino Resort in Marksville, Choctaw Pines Casino in Dry Prong, Coushatta Casino Resort in Kinder and Natchez's Magnolia Bluffs Casino across the Mississippi River from Vidalia. Casinos were shut down from mid-March to Mid-May and are just now reopening under reduced capacity restrictions.

Speaking of unemployment, Avoyelles continued a three-week trend of reduced number of new unemployment claims for the week of May 9. After declining numbers from March 21-April 11,when there was 412 new claims, Avoyelles had a jobless spike for the week of April 18 to 491 new claims. This occurred right after the second two-week extension of the "two weeks to beat COVID" plan.There were similar spikes in other parishes.

One possible explanation for this spike is that workers who were laid off and thought they could tough it out until their jobs came back realized it might last longer than they originally thought.

For the week of May 9, there were only 234 new jobless claims in Avoyelles. We say "only," but it should be remembered that for the week of March 14 -- just before the emergency order-- there were only 14 new claims in the parish.

SALES TAXES
A major concern being expressed around the parish is how COVID will affect local government's pocketbook in terms of sales tax revenue. Unfortunately, the Dupont report does not provide a clear answer to that question because the available data actually depicts activity in March -- not April. Half of March was pre-COVID and half was in the early weeks of "stay at home."

The figures for April will be a better measure of how the health care crisis affected consumer spending under a full month of the state emergency order restrictions and compared to last April. Those revenue numbers should be available in a few weeks.

Using the Avoyelles School Board's data for its parishwide sales taxes, sales tax collections increased 41.4 per-cent from February to March. However, collections were down by 6.8 percent from March 2019. Vehicle sales tax showed a similar pattern -- up 21.4 percent in March from February but down 3.9 percent from last March.

"March consumer spending in Central Louisiana was much stronger than expected, according to April tax revenues,” Dupont said.

Dupont said small businesses in Louisiana, while still relatively "gloomy," are more optimistic than the national average. A survey found 45 percent of Louisiana small businesses believe COVID-19 has had a large negative impact on their businesses. The nationwide response was 51 percent. While 38 percent of Louisiana small businesses surveyed said they believe the economy will recover in one to three months, the national response was 28 percent.

Louisiana also had a higher participation in the Payroll Protection Program, which provides low-interest disaster loans to business negatively impacted by the COVID-19crisis, 48 percent compared to 38 percent.

MOVING FORWARD
As this parish, state and nation move cautiously forward in search of "normal," the old saying that "there's no such thing as too much information" is ringing truer than usual.

Political, social and health care leaders are all grasping for any tool, weapon or advantage to beat the invisible enemy and achieve a quick recovery for all -- not only from the disease, but from its economic effects.

Reports like Dupont's Economic Dashboard gather a variety of information and present it in simple terms with useful graphs and tables.

You don't have to be an economist to understand the report, but if you are an economist it provides you with a little more ammunition to fight the enemy.