“Getting a hamburger and a beer isn’t worth more deaths,” one Arizona resident said of the state’s push to reopen.
In mid-May, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey ended the state’s stay-at-home order and proclaimed the state ready for “the next stage of economic recovery.” Little more than a month later, that recovery is under serious strain as local coronavirus cases spike, causing some reopened businesses to close again and consumers to retreat homeward.
States now seeing explosive growth in coronavirus cases are also taking an economic hit, with indicators such as restaurant bookings, consumer spending and small business activity pointing to a slowdown, according to Deutsche Bank economists.
Those states include Arizona, South Carolina and Texas, all of which pushed to reopen their economies quickly. Texas, which had one of the shortest stay-at-home orders in the country, on Thursday announced a halt to its reopening plan, citing the surge in COVID-19 cases.
“More people are staying home as cases soar, and small firms are shedding jobs,” economist Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics told investors in a note.
The economic headwinds facing states like Arizona and Texas suggest an uneven recovery for the nation as a whole rather than the quick rebound some economists had predicted at the start of the pandemic.
Reopening restaurants and clothing stores may immediately draw some consumers out of their homes, but many others are holding off until the pandemic appears to be under control or a vaccine becomes available. And without plenty of consumers willing to resume their old patterns of spending, businesses will struggle to regain their footing.
Glendale, Arizona, resident Colin Seale is among those avoiding local restaurants as well as national retail chains like Walmart and Target.
