Haslam College of Business Tennessee’s Post-Pandemic Labor Force Recovery

For the past several years, one of the most important economic issues facing our state has been the recovery of the labor market after the COVID-19 pandemic.  The short but intense recession that followed the onset of the pandemic resulted in an unprecedented number of unemployment claims: 981,414 in 2020, a 628% increase from 134,818 in 2019. At the same time, there was a sharp decrease in the number of Tennesseans who viewed themselves as part of the labor force—that is, either working, on a temporary leave, or unemployed but looking for work. The state’s labor force participation rate was 61.7% in January 2020 and fell to 58.7% in April 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  In this brief, we review the extent to which Tennessee has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of labor force participation.