The Economic Impacts of Covid-19 in Montana Preliminary Analysis April 2020

The unprecedently swift and severe declines in economic activity that have coincided with the outbreak of the global Covid-19 pandemic have not spared Montana. As recently as mid-February, when the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) was in the midst of its statewide Economic Outlook tour, Montana was at full employment and enjoying a third consecutive fiscal year of healthy state revenue growth.

Declines since then have occurred too quickly to be adequately measured by the most comprehensive economic measures, but when those data become available they will depict a broad-based recession of greater magnitude than what was experienced in 2008-09. The BBER has conducted a preliminary analysis of this new economic trajectory to help achieve a betterunderstanding of the economic challenges that governments, businesses and households will face in the coming months.

The analysis must be considered preliminary because the fluidity and uncertainty of the evolving health and economic situation make it almost impossible to incorporate all of the relevant information. The key driver for this analysis is the revision to the U.S. economic outlook between December 2019, when the virus was off the radar for most of us, to April 2020, when its effects have propagated to every continent on earth.

The question posed by this analysis is: what does the revised level and composition of national economic activity mean for the Montana economy? Our principal findings are that:

Acknowledgements The Bureau of Business and Economic Research is grateful to NorthWestern Energy for their generous support of this research.