2021 E-Insights Report

Key Insights from COVID-19 Analysis

Researchers looked at the impact of COVID-19 and found that among Florida MSAs, Jacksonville fared best with lower COVID-19 incidence rates and better unemployment rates. While the region did not fare as well as Jacksonville, the Tampa Bay MSA has been relatively less impacted by COVID-19 as compared to the Miami and Orlando MSAs. Both the COVID-19 incidence rates and unemployment rates for the Tampa Bay region have been lower than those in Miami and Orlando.

When it comes to small business revenue, data that is available at the city level, researchers again saw that Jacksonville had less of an impact than Tampa, but Tampa still fared better than Orlando and Miami.

The analysis indicates that the Tampa Bay MSA is on the path of recovery. In terms of consumer spending, the Tampa Bay region has recovered to the 100 percent of January value by mid-October. The unemployment rate for all the MSAs, including Tampa Bay, is declining which is, of course, a positive sign.

One insight from the analysis worth noting is that, contrary to popular speculation that people are fleeing from cities as a result of work-from-home and real estate opportunities, researchers did not see any evidence for the changing relative demand for rental properties in urban and suburban regions of MSAs.