Weekly Indicators for June 28 - July 2 at Seeking Alpha

 

- by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.

The indicators in all time frames continue to be very positive, with mortgage rates continuing to tick down. We continue to have supply bottlenecks in “used” housing, cars, and a continued increase in gas prices - but so far no sign of any slowdown. The biggest immediate threat is the impact of the “delta variant” of COVID on the unvaccinated portions of the country.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you thoroughly up to date, and bring me a few pennies in my pocket.

June jobs report: a tale of two very different surveys - but both far from full recovery

 

 - by New Deal democrat

HEADLINES:

• 850,000 jobs added. Of these, 662,000 were private sector jobs, and 188,000 were government jobs, chiefly in education. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report indicated a gain of only 128,000 jobs, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below.
• The total number of employed is still 6,764,000, or -4.4% below its pre-pandemic peak.  At this rate jobs have grown this year, it will take another full year for employment to completely recover.
• U3 unemployment rate *rose* 0.1% to 5.9%, compared with the January 2020 low of 3.5%.
• U6 underemployment rate declined -0.4% to 9.8%, compared with the January 2020 low of 6.9%.
• Those on temporary layoff declined -12,000 to 1,811,000.
• Permanent job losers declined -47,000 to 3,187,000.
• April was revised downward by -9,000, while May was revised upward by 24,000, for a net gain of 15,000 jobs compared with previous reports.

Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession

These are leading sectors for the economy overall, and will help us gauge how strong the rebound from the pandemic will be.  These were mixed: 

• the average manufacturing workweek decreased -0.2 hours to 40.2 hours. This is one of the 10 components of the LEI.

• Manufacturing jobs rose 15,000. Since the beginning of the pandemic, manufacturing has still lost -481,000 jobs, or -3.8% of the total.
• Construction jobs fell -7,000. Since the beginning of the pandemic, -238,000 construction jobs have been lost, or -3.1% of the total.
• Residential construction jobs, which are even more leading, rose by 2,500. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 33,100 jobs have been gained in this sector, or 3.4%.

• temporary jobs rose by 3,300. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have still been -278,500 jobs lost, or -9.5% of all temporary jobs.
• the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less declined by -42,000 to 1,981,000, which is  -101,000 *lower* than just before the pandemic hit.
• Professional and business employment rose by 72,000, which is still 633,000, or about -2.9%, below its pre-pandemic peak.

Wages of non-managerial workers

• Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $0.10 to $25.68, which is a 3.7% YoY gain. This is excellent news, considering that many low-wage workers have finally been recalled to work. 

Aggregate hours and wages:

• the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers declined by -0.1%, which is a  loss of -4.4% since just before the pandemic.

•  the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose by 0.3%, which is a gain of 2.5% since just before the pandemic.

Other significant data:

• Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the most hard-hit during the pandemic, increased 343,000, but is still 2.2 million, or 12.9% below their pre-pandemic peak.
• Within the leisure and hospitality sector, food and drink establishments gained 194,000, but is still -1,270,200, or -10.3% below their pre-pandemic peak.
• Full time jobs decreased -183,000 in the household report.
• Part time jobs increased 408,000 in the household report.
• The number of job holders who were part time for economic reasons declined by 644,000 to 4,627,000, which is an increase of 229,000 since before the pandemic began.

SUMMARY

This month saw two very different components of the overall jobs report. The establishment survey, which tells us how many jobs were added or lost in various sectors, was very strong, while the household report, which tells us things about unemployment and underemployment, was very weak although still positive.

There was lots of good news in the hardest hit sectors of leisure and hospitality and eduction, which were responsible for over half of all the job gains; while manufacturing, construction, and professional and business services were either weakly positive or even slightly negative. Wage growth also continued strongly, which is certainly good news.

On the other hand, full time jobs as measured in the household report actually declined. But both permanent and temporary layoffs decreased, as did the newly unemployed, as did involuntary part time employment - all of which are very good.

Putting everything together, this month’s report showed substantial and steady progress, but nowhere near enough to fully recover from the pandemic for many months to come (and that’s not taking into account what may await as a result of increasing COVID cases due to the “delta” variant).

June data starts out mixed: manufacturing strong, housing stalls

 

 - by New Deal democrat

June data started out this morning with the ISM manufacturing report. There was no big change from last month’s torrid pace. The overall index declined a very slight -0.6% to 60.6, while the leading new orders component declined by 1 to 66:

Any number over 60 implies a very strong economy, so this report indicates that the manufacturing sector is still red hot.

The last big May number, construction spending, was also reported, showing a definite cooling in the housing sector. Total spending actually declined a slight -0.3% from April, while the leading residential sector increased a slight 0.2%, even before taking into account inflation in housing materials:

In short, we start out the month with one leading sector, manufacturing, continuing to be very positive, while one long leading sector, housing, shows evidence of stalling if not a peak.

New jobless claims: a surprise to the positive side

 

 - by New Deal democrat

I have been paying particular attention to new jobless claims this year, as being the most important weekly economic datapoint to correlate with vaccination progress. My ultimate target for claims is an average of 325,000 or below, which would signify a return to normal expansion levels in the past 30 years.

Lasts week I wrote that “Unfortunately, that progress [in vaccinations] has largely stalled in the past month, and now new jobless claims appear to have stalled as well.”

For this week, at least, I was wrong - and am glad to be so if the positive trend lasts.

This week new jobless claims declined 51,000 to 364,000, a new pandemic low 10,000 below the previous low of 374,000 set three weeks ago. The 4 week average of claims also declined by 6,000 to a new pandemic low of 392,750. Here is the trend since last August:

By way of contrast, at the peak of the pandemic lockdowns in spring 2020, new claims were running 6 million to 7 million per week.

From late February into May, claims had trended down an average of roughly 100,000 per month. This had slowed to roughly 50,000 per month, and over the last 4 weeks, is only down about 35,000. This implies a much weaker employment report tomorrow for June than we saw in the March - May months.

Continuing claims, which are reported with a one week lag, and lag the trend of initial claims typically by a few weeks to several months, have only declined about 10% from roughly 3,750,000 over the past 3 1/2 months:

At least some of this decline *may* be due to many States’ termination of all extended jobless benefits due to the pandemic.

A long term perspective shows that these are equivalent to the worst levels of most previous recessions, or early in the expansions, versus at 2,000,000 or below later in strong expansions:

While I would like to believe that the good news is going to continue, there is no getting around that the “delta outbreak” has begun in the least vaccinated States of the Deep South and interior West, and is likely to follow an exponential scale over the next weeks and possibly months. 

So I continue to believe, as I first wrote three weeks ago, “I think we are going to see two tracks going forward from here, as near-normalcy does return to the more vaccinated parts of the country, while attempts to return to normalcy fail in the laggard regions.” And that implies at least a stall in the decline in new claims, and - I actually suspect - an increase, perhaps to about 450,000 per week or so.

Coronavirus dashboard for June 30: 2 to 4 weeks until a likely major “Delta” outbreak in unvaccinated regions

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Missouri has been the US bellwether for the onset of the “Delta” variant of COVID. Which makes the below graph by Charles Gaba of infection rates by county for June in Missouri particularly insightful:

As has been usual, partisanship, which has correlated highly with vaccinations, in turn also has a strong relationship with the rate of new infections. But more importantly, note just how high an infection level some of the least vaccinated counties have had in June. Many of them are over 0.5% of population newly infected in June, and a few are over 1% - this with “Delta” just getting underway.

If Missouri’s rate continues to rise (and, as we’ll see below, there is every reason to expect that to happen), then COVID is going to burn through Missouri’s (and other similarly situated States’) population in the next few months like a forest fire exploding uphill.

Here is the long term view of how “Delta” is impacting the 3 most vaccinated countries - the US, UK, and Israel:

Now here is the close-up of the past 8 weeks:

Israel, the most vaccinated of all countries, has seen a relatively mild increase that has been mainly confined to young children and teens, none of whom were vaccinated, and also to unvaccinated adults. In the UK, by contrast, which largely had only one vaccination by the somewhat less effective AstraZeneca vaccine, the pandemic has once again flared out of control. The US has only just begun a slow increase in the past week.

The number of States in the US with increasing cases over the past 2 weeks has increased to 12 (compared with New Jersey in orange, the “worst” of the Northeastern States, which has been flat):

Several of these States, most notably CA and VA, have shown slight increases from very low levels, which might be noise;  but the rest all seem to be in established uptrends.

Finally, here are the worst 5 States compared with the UK:

NV appears to be only about 9 days behind the trend in the UK, with the other 4 about 2 weeks behind. If these States’ trends continue - and there is no reason to think their populations are going to change their minds about vaccines, masking, or social distancing at this late date - then they will be in the thick of a “Delta wave” in about 2 to 4 weeks, with many other States in the Deep South and interior West close behind.

House prices continue to surge, with affordability near its worst since the Great Recession

 

 - by New Deal democrat

The FHFA and Case Shiller house price indexes for May and April, respectively, were released this morning. Because housing affordability is very much an issue, let’s take a look.

YoY the FHFA index is up 15.7%, and the Case Shiller national index is up 13.9%:

Not shown, but recall that last week the median price for new single family homes was reported up 18.1% YoY for May, and for existing homes up 23.6% YoY. This is on par with their most drastic increases during the housing bubble.

A quick estimate of how (un-)affordable housing is can be seen by dividing house prices by average hourly wages, i.e., how many hours of income does it cost to buy a typical house. Here’s a long term view of what all 4 indexes looked like normed to 1 as of May 2020:

Note that existing home prices are only available to FRED from the NAR for the past 12 months. But it is quite clear that “real” wage-adjusted house prices are close to their most extreme measures during the bubble.

Another type of estimate, for the typical monthly mortgage payment, can be obtained by multiplying the indexes by the prevailing 30 year mortgage rate (important note: this does not produce the actual monthly mortgage payment, but is a reasonably close estimate):

Here the news is much less alarming, as the typical monthly mortgage payment, while higher than a year ago, is nowhere near as high as it was during the housing bubble.

As a result, at 155.8, the NAR’s “housing affordability index” is close to its lowest (I.e., least affordable) reading since 2009, although it is higher than at any point during the housing bubble, when it was always below 150 and at its worst was just above 100:

An important difference vs. the housing bubble is that there were many speculators in the market, buying simply on the expectation that prices would continue to rise, i.e., “everyone knows house prices only go up!” This time around there is no evidence of such speculation, although obviously there is some panic buying for fear of being “forever priced out.”

We have already seen a downturn in sales. I do not believe this level of prices can be maintained for long.

Coronavirus dashboard for June 28: comparisons with one year ago as “delta” spreads

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Let’s begin this installment with a look at vaccinations by county from a different source that a reader pointed me to last week, COVIDactnow: 

The urban/rural and Red State/Blue State divides are pretty obvious. Conor Kelly (whose work I was highlighting one year ago) also has a more detailed breakdown:

He notes that income level also correlates with vaccination rates even without taking partisanship into account:

Kelly also notes that test positivity rates have also crept higher in the South and West regions where vaccinations have been lagging:

And indeed, when we look at the national level, both deaths and new cases have all but stopped declining:

Cases were declining at a rate of 1500/day up until several weeks ago. Now they have been declining a 1500/*week*, and may have bottomed 5 days ago.

There are 16 States where cases are either flat or higher compared with where they were 2 weeks ago:

I expect this list to grow over the next week, since there are a number of States with numbers higher than they were 10 or 11 days ago. Note that several of the States have high vaccination rates - CA, NJ, VA, and NM - and in the case of the first 3 there may not be any significant increase, and all are at low levels, but are included for consistency.

For comparison purposes, here is what the top 10 States for new cases looked like one year ago:

Note that the per capita rate was measured per 1,000,000 one year ago vs. per 100,000 now, so divide by 10 for the rate as measured in the current graph. In other words, by the current measure, the top 10 States had between 15 and 40 cases per 100,000, vs. 5 to 13 cases per 100,000 now.

But several States, most importantly MO and WY, have just as high case rates as they had one year ago:

In the case of Missouri, their number of new cases per capita has doubled in the past 4 weeks, from 6.5 to 13.

Missouri is particularly instructive, because the State has terminated pandemic employment benefits to force people back to work under the misimpression that the pandemic is “over.” I predict a poor result.

My best guess at this point - and this is all anyone really has - is that the “delta” variant will only cause a small increase in most highly vaccinated States, except for several, notably California, with huge populations at high density (so easier for the variant to spread among those remaining unvaccinated). But the variant will likely cause a very large spike, although not as bad as last winter’s, among the least vaccinated States. I expect that Missouri will lead the way here, and we will have a very clear picture in about 4 to 6 weeks, unfortunately and needlessly at the cost of much misery and death.

Weekly Indicators for June 21- 25 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.

All of the important metrics for the economy remain positive.

But, in addition to supply chain issues, we have to start worrying about COVID again, because the delta variant has now taken hold in up to 8 States with rising new cases. All of those States have fewer vaccinations per capita than the national average, and most of them much below the average. By the end of July, I anticipate that it will be clear there is a new “wave” of cases in the relatively unvaccinated States. Aside from the human cost, it is unclear how much this will retard recovery in the economy as a whole.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to date, and bring me a little bit of change.

Real personal income and spending both decline in May - but that’s OK, as it was mainly expiration of stimulus; NBER likely to declare end of recession soon

 

 - by New Deal democrat

The last of the 4 monthly coincident markers for whether the economy is in recession vs. expansion was reported this morning for May. Let’s take a look.

Personal income declined -2.0% in nominal terms, which on top of April’s decline of -13.1%, has taken back most, not by no means all, of March’s big 20.7% gain. The Census Bureau specifically noted in its press release that “the decrease in personal income for May reflected declines in pandemic-related assistance programs.”

Personal spending was unchanged in nominal terms. But both are still ahead, by 8.8% and 5.3%, respectively, of where they were in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit:

The price deflator, i.e., the inflation measure used in this release, was -0.4% (meaning in essence a 0.4% increase in prices). The below graph takes that into account and shows both real personal consumption expenditures (spending) and real disposable personal income:

Again,both real income and spending are above their pre-recession levels by 6.0% and 1.9%. 

Simply put, in this crisis decisive action by the government to put cash in consumers’ hands has worked.

 The “official” recession vs. expansion metric is real personal income less transfer receipts (things like unemployment insurance), shown below:

This was already above its pre-recession level in April, and with its 0.4% gain in May, is now 0.8% ahead of February 2020. 

Finally, here are employment, industrial production, real gdp, real retail sales, and real personal income less transfer receipts together:

The last two are already above their pre-recession levels. Real GDP for Q2 is also expected to exceed its pre-recession level when it is reported next month. While industrial production is down by -1.4% from February 2020, its manufacturing component is only down -0.3%. Only employment remains severely down.

Thus, while “happy days are [certainly not] here again” as to employment, unless there is a nasty negative surprise next month, I expect the NBER to shortly declare that the pandemic recession has ended, most likely with the trough date in April 2020.

New jobless claims stall, adding to the evidence that stalling vaccinations and case counts are having an economic effect

  

- by New Deal democrat

New jobless claims have been the most important weekly economic datapoint this year, as they have correlated strongly with vaccination progress. Unfortunately, that progress has largely stalled in the past month, and now new jobless claims appear to have stalled as well.

This week new jobless claims declined 7,000 to 411,000, 37,000 higher than the pandemic low of 374,000 set two weeks ago. The 4 week average of claims also rose by 1,500 above last week’s pandemic low to 397,750.

At the peak of the pandemic lockdowns, new claims were running 6 million to 7 million per week. Here is the trend since the beginning of last August:

From late February into May, claims had trended down an average of roughly 100,000 per month. This had slowed to roughly 50,000 per month, indicating that the “opening” of the economy is getting nearer to an endpoint. As indicated above, since 5 weeks ago, the trend is now sideways. This also implies a sharp slowing down of net job creation from the last 3 months’ levels.

The story is different for continuing claims, which are reported with a one week lag, and lag the trend of initial claims typically by a few weeks to several months. These set a new pandemic low, falling 144,000 to 3,390,000.  At the same time, over the past 3 months these have only declined about 10% from roughly 3,750,000:

At least some of this decline *may* be due to many States’ termination of all extended jobless benefits due to the pandemic.

A long term perspective shows that these are equivalent to the worst levels of most previous recessions, or early in the expansions, versus at 2,000,000 or below later in strong expansions:

As I wrote two weeks ago and reiterated last week, “I think we are going to see two tracks going forward from here, as near-normalcy does return to the more vaccinated parts of the country, while attempts to return to normalcy fail in the laggard regions.”

Last week I further wrote, “Over the next 6 to 8 weeks, these States [in the South and the mountain West with low vaccination rates] are ripe for a serious outbreak of the highly infectious new ‘delta’ variant of the disease,” which in turn is going to lead to many people “re-cocooning” themselves in those areas, and thus decreasing economic activity there. This will result in there being 2 separate economic tracks in regions of the US depending on vaccinations and new outbreaks.

[As an aside, when Seeking Alpha cross-posted my note last week, a bunch of RW nutjobs completely lost their minds, a reminder of how much politicized irrational insanity is out there. As a result, I have terminated that arrangement.]

This week’s jobless claims data supports that argument. My final objective  for claims to average 325,000 or below, which would signify a return to normal expansion levels in the past 30 years, increasingly appears to be a ways off.

New home sales edition: the remedy for high prices is . . . high prices

 

 - by New Deal democrat

New home sales confirmed this morning what we learned from existing home sales yesterday, and from housing permits and starts earlier in the month: in terms of new construction and sales, the housing market has peaked.

To the numbers.... New single family home sales declined -48,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis to 769,000 annually, the lowest level in 11 months (blue in the graph below):

New home sales have declined by nearly 1/4 (-22.6% to be more precise) off their January peak. They thus confirm the decline shown in the much less noisy single family permits series (red).

Median sales prices, however, continue to boom, up 18.1% YoY (blue) vs. 23.6% for existing homes (red):

Comparing sales with inventory (gold in the graph below), we can see that sales peak and bottom first (shown YoY in the graph below, but the same is true of the absolute values):

Inventory of new homes for sale bottomed last August and is now up 7.1% YoY.

As I said yesterday, the remedy for high prices is . . . high prices. I expect sales to continue to decline until the price situation is addressed.  

Coronavirus dashboard for June 23: And so, it (the delta wave) begins

 

 - by New Deal democrat

[Note: New home sales will be reported later this morning, and I will post on that report afterward.]

There is now more evidence that the “delta” variant of COVID is taking hold in the unvaccinated regions of the country, and case counts are increasing accordingly.

Below are the 5 States that have all seen unequivocal increases in new cases over the past 2 to 4 weeks:

*All* of these except for Nevada are among the lowest 1/3rd of States for vaccinations. Arkansas, at 33% fully vaccinated, is the 3rd worst. Oklahoma and Utah, at 37%, are tied for 8th worst, and Missouri, at 38%, is tied for 12th worst. Only Nevada, at 41%, is closer to the middle of the pack.

As an aside, the 2 worst States for vaccinations, Mississippi at 29% and Alabama at 32%, almost certainly are in worse shape than their “official” new case counts. Although I won’t post graphs, both are among the 10 worst States for the rate of testing, and both are among the 10 highest States for the rate of positive test results (along with 4 of the 5 States above experiencing new outbreaks). Their rate of positivity hasn’t started significantly increasing - yet.

Because I am not a DOOOMsayer, I want to contrast this with the case of Colorado, which has a good  full vaccination rate at 50%, is nearly surrounded by States doing poorly, and yet has case counts that have continued to decline, albeit from high levels:

Colorado will make a very good bellwether for whether high levels of vaccinations will slow or stop the delta spread. 

The remedy for high house prices is . . . high house prices

 

 - by New Deal democrat

I normally don’t pay much attention to existing home sales, since they tell us much less about future economic activity than new home sales, but since there is nothing else on the calendar today, let’s take a brief look.

Existing home sales declined again, by 0.9%, in May, to a 10 month low (blue in the graph below). Prices, however, continued to soar (red):

Prices are now up 23.6% YoY!:

Existing home sales have clearly joined the decline already evident in new home sales (gold) and also housing permits and starts (not shown):

As always, sales lead prices. If sales continue to trend much lower, expect prices to reverse course soon. In this regard, just for reference, here is my template of the late 1980’s for the kind of sales and price decline I am expecting as a first estimate:

After sales peaked, with a delay the YoY increase in prices declined by more than half, and indeed prices only increased on average about 1% a year (less than the rate of inflation) in the last several years before the recession.

Coronavirus dashboard for June 21: watching the States with flat or increasing rates of new cases

 

 - by New Deal democrat

For the past week I have been sounding the alarm about the economic impact of the “delta” variant of COVID. We are probably already beginning to see its impact on the case count in several States, with many more primed to join the pack, so that is what I want to focus on today.

To begin with, let’s compare the 3 countries that have had the most aggressive vaccination programs: the US, UK, and Israel:

Israel has defeated the virus. It’s case count is down to virtually zero. Vaccinations work! But thanks to the “delta” variant, the UK has seen more than a tripling of new cases over the past month. That is where the future likely lies for at least the unvaccinated portions of the US.  One difference between the two is that the UK emphasized maximizing the population with one dose, so when the variant hit, relatively few were fully vaccinated.

Here is what the county-by-county breakdown of vaccinations in the US looks like (note that several States do not fully report, so are greyed out):

Among other places, note the many counties along the lower Mississippi River and in the panhandle of Florida in which less than 25% of the population is fully vaccinated. And it appears that it is along this route: specifically southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma and Kansas where the “delta” variant may be making its earliest impact. 

In particular, as noted in This report by a local television station: “The [Missouri] state dashboard says new cases are up by about 20.3% over the past seven days. The positivity rate has jumped 1.2 percentage points in that same time, while tests are down 4.6%.” According to other reports,  

“ A swath of southern Missouri is seeing a big rise in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations  at just the wrong time - as tourists eager to get out after being cooped up for a year make their way to popular destinations such as Branson and Lake of the Ozarks.

....

  most southern Missouri counties are well short of 40%. Branson sits in Taney and Stone counties, where the vaccination rates as of Wednesday were 27.4% and 28.4% respectively. Miller County, at Lake of the Ozarks, had a vaccination rate of 22.9%.

“We think that with the Delta variant here, those that aren’t vaccinated are just sitting ducks," said Steve Edwards, CEO of CoxHealth, which operates several hospitals in the region.

To gauge where the variant may be beginning to show, below are the 17 States where there has been no decline in new cases over the past 2 weeks, divided between those which may have declared premature victory, those where the virus is just as rampant as last summer, and those in between.

There are five States - MO, AR, AZ, NV, and UT - where the virus is just as widespread as last summer:

Note that in 3 of them - MO, AR, and UT - the number of new cases has actually risen. 

Next, here are the 7 States that may have declared premature victory:

In all of these States, new cases are averaging less than 3.5 per 100,000 daily. At all previous times during the pandemic, that would be excellent. At less than 1 per 100,000, Vermont is outstanding! - but, to be consistent, that rate has not declined in the past 2 weeks.

Finally, here are the 5 States that are in between, all averaging between 4 and 5 cases per 100,000 population daily:

Note that in Oklahoma, and possibly New Mexico as well, cases are increasing.

In particular, three of the States that show increasing new cases - OK, MO, and AR - are contiguous, and all show low vaccination rates.

All of these States bear watching, the ones with higher rates to see how bad the next wave gets, and the ones at the low end to see if their higher rates of vaccinations stem the tide, or whether they too see significant upturns. 

Weekly Indicators for June 14 - 18 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.

There was a little more deterioration in the long leading indicators, but they are still positive.

Meanwhile, the new more infectious “delta” variant of COVID raises the real possibility that the relatively unvaccianated sections of the country could go backward, with increased cases and deaths, and people resuming caution about social activities; which also means lower economic activity.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment, and bring me a few bucks with which to pay my bar tab.

Coronavirus dashboard for June 17: big progress since 1 year ago; big “Delta” challenge still ahead

 

 - by New Deal democrat

One year ago today, in my Coronavirus Dashboard for June 17, here was my graph of cases:

Which I described as:

As shown in the graph above, [after Arizona at 214 per million population] the remaining “top 10” are all States in the Confederacy, High Plains, and Mountain West. In order, (showing rates of new infections per million as of June 15 in parentheses) they are: Alabama (156), Arkansas (150), South Carolina (125), Louisiana (127), North Carolina (117), Utah (102), Mississippi (98), Florida (83), and Iowa (83).

One year later, the scale of the current pandemic is an order or more of magnitude lower. But the regions with the worst outbreaks remain the same (sadly, ingrained behavior patterns are incredibly resistant to change).

Let’s begin the current situation with CNN’s graph of vaccination rates in the 50 States plus DC and PR:

The regional disparities are completely obvious. While in the US as a whole, 96 doses have been administered per 100 population, the range varies from Vermont at close to 140 doses to Mississippi at about 62 doses. Basically in Mississippi plus all of the other States less than 40% fully vaccinated remain at risk for a renewed outbreak of the virus at any time.

Here is the US situation as to the 7 day average of both new cases and deaths:

Progress on new cases has slowed considerably, while deaths, which lag by about 4 weeks, are still declining. Deaths will probably follow cases to a near halt in the decline at about 300 deaths per day.

Because of the regional differences, below are new cases for each of the four US regions.

Northeast:

Midwest:

South (including DE, MD, DC, and VA):

And West:

Let’s break the above down by ranges of new cases [NOTE: since 1 year ago 91-DIVOC was measuring per 1 million, and now they measure by 100,000, current rates must be multiplied by 10 to compare with the graph from 1 year ago]:

Under 2 per 100,000: VT, SD, CT, MA, MD, WI, NE, VA, DC, PR, NH, SC

2 to 4 per 100,000: NY, IL, CA, MI, MN, RI, TN, PA, OH, IA, NJ, ME, DE, ND, GA, AK, NC, TX, HI, KS, MS

4 to 6 per 100,000: OK, AL, NM, WV, KY, IN, ID, MT, AZ, OR

6 to 8 per 100,000: LA, WA, NV, FL

8 to 10 per 100,000: AR, UT, CO, MO

Over 10 per 100,000: WY

While new cases do not closely track the vaccination rate, the correlation remains obvious, as the best States are all of the Northeast (under 3 cases per 100,000) plus the Mid-Atlantic (DE, MD, DC, and VA), upper Midwest, and California. The worst States are in the Deep South and West, plus Missouri. But there are surprises, like SD and SC doing very well, while WA and CO are doing relatively poorly.

As the “Delta” variant becomes more widespread in the next 4 to 8 weeks, it will be a real challenge for the relatively unvaccinated States. At the same time, all but 12 of the States are currently below even the lowest level of new infections one year ago, and Wyoming’s now is only about 1/2 of Arizona’s last summer at this time - although it would have been in the top 10.