Search activity fell BELOW national trend in states cutting off federal UI imminently (June 12 and 19). That's not what you'd expect if people were upping their searches ahead of UI ending ...
... if anything it looks like relative search activity rises in states roughly one month before federal UI benefits are scheduled to end, and then falls. I'm not sure why -- open to hunches! And even that pattern isn't very strong.
What's clear is there's not a big jump in relative search activity in states cutting off federal UI benefits this Saturday June 12. We'll be watching what happens in those and other states.
Places that gained movers in the pandemic were, those that gained pre-pandemic. New York and the Bay Area stand out for losing more people in the pandemic than the year before.
The metros people moved to in 2020 (relative to 2019) were smaller vacation and resort areas, especially in NY State and New England. The top three metros where in-migration increased are all striking distance from New York City.
Job postings on @indeed are 11% below last year's trend. Very slight improvement vs week ago (-11.5% vs -11.6%). Gains have slowed, especially relative to summer rebound.
Food prep and childcare job postings have slowed in the past couple of weeks as the virus spreads. But loading & stocking jobs are well above last year's trend.
The 2020 vote was very similar to 2016 -- and slightly LESS polarized.
Correlation of county vote margin between 2016 and 2020 was 0.99 (not a typo). And Trump-voting counties in 2016 swung more to Biden than Clinton-voting counties in 2016 did.
Places with brighter future economic prospects swung toward Biden. Higher college attainment, higher median household income, faster projected job growth, and fewer routine jobs were all correlated with a bigger Democratic margin in 2020 than 2016.
Places with better economic outcomes swung toward Biden in 2020. Faster job growth and lower unemployment pre-pandemic -- as well as pandemic-era milder job losses and smaller unemployment increases -- went hand-in-hand with bigger Democratic margins.