Manatee tourist economy forecast to be among the hardest hit in the United States
Manatee County tops the 10 tourism-driven regions in the United States that will see the steepest percentage drop in gross domestic product during April, May and June, the second quarter of the year, according to StratoDem Analytics.
Manatee is expected to see a 28 percent decline, and take a hit of $993 million.
“On a more human level, that’s approximately $5,700 of lost GDP per household for Q2, primarily due to fewer people generating economic output at work,” said StratoDem’s James Chung in an email.
Sarasota County is forecast to experience a 25 percent decline in GDP, totaling $1.3 billion, according to StratoDem, which is based in Cambridge, Mass.
Most U.S. counties will likely see a 15-20 percent drop in the second quarter, but the trickle-down impact from COVID-19 will hit much harder for counties driven by tourism or cyclical manufacturing, seeing drops closer to 25 percent, StratoDem said.
“In a period of massive uncertainty, the national GDP forecasts published by various financial institutions (e.g., Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, etc.) range widely. StratoDem Analytics has built a consensus estimate of national forecasts for Q2 2020, averaging -12.88 percent,” the report said.
Other tourist dependent regions expected to take a major hit include the Reno, Nev., area with a 27.6 percent decline, or $1.8 billion, the Naples area with a 27.2 percent decline, or $1.3 billion, the Fort Myers area with a 27.4 percent decline, or $2.1 billion, and the Las Vegas area with an 25.6 percent decline, or $7.9 billion, according to the report.
Orange County, at the heart of the Orlando area, shows only a forecasted 20.9 percent decline of $5.3 billion in the report, but Chung said that with Disney World, Universal and the other attractions, the hit will be substantially higher and acknowledged that the machine count was lower than what will actually be experienced.
“That’s the biggest asterisk in the report,” Chung said.
In other grim economic news, more than 3 million more Americans filed unemployment claims in the week ending March 21, than the previous week, according to figures released Thursday by the Department of Labor.
In Florida, jobless claims jumped to 74,021, compared to 6,463 the week before, as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the United States.
This marks the highest level of initial claims in the history of the seasonally adjusted series. The previous high was 695,000 in October of 1982, and experts are forecasting a deep national recession.
Jamie Meade is one of the Manatee County residents looking for work after Feld Entertainment in Palmetto closed all of its shows due to the pandemic.
“It is very surreal. There was a mass exodus of people with boxes in their hands,” he said.
“I don’t fault Feld because it is a great company, but we were told that our jobs were secure and that we would be able to work from home with company laptops,” said Meade, who worked in ticket sales. “Something must have happened at the 11th hour.”
Most likely, that something was the rapidly changing face of the pandemic.
“I am trying to stay safe with social distancing, and will have to start looking for another job. I would go back if they called me. It will be a little tight. I was hoping to retire in a couple of years,” said the Bayshore High School graduate.
Jiten Patel of Holiday Inn Airport, 8009 15th St. E., previously told the Herald that in his 25-year career he has not seen anything like what has befallen the hospitality industry.
“One day we go from 100 percent occupancy to 20 percent the next day. This is unprecedented,” Patel said. “We definitely look to our government to support us. We are all in this together.”
The U.S. Senate this week passed a $2.2 trillion economic rescue package to aid to businesses, workers and health care systems.
Amid all the bad economic news, there were a few glimmers of good news in Manatee County with some sectors of Bradenton area farming on the upswing. Jones Potato Farm was reporting calls from several supermarket chains requesting heir product and Tropicana was working at full capacity making orange juice.
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Manatee tourist economy forecast to be among the hardest hit in the United States."
