Vaccinated Americans Aren't Driving the Economic Recovery
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Here's your Money Briefing for Tuesday, May 25th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. The economy has come roaring back as people venture back out to restaurants and other businesses that were off-limits during the pandemic. But economic data shows that vaccinated Americans aren't the ones powering the recovery.
So think concert venues, theaters, that sort of place. Spending at entertainment venues was up about 20% among people who don't plan to get the vaccine. That's in April compared with January 2020, whereas it was up about 10% among vaccinated people.
Our reporter Sarah Cheney Kambon spoke to market research firms about why vaccinated Americans aren't going out as much as those who are unvaccinated. She'll join us to talk about it after the break.
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How does vaccination status correlate with current consumer spending patterns?
The mass production and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines were seen as a key to the economy getting back on track. But economic data has revealed something unexpected. People who haven't gotten the vaccine are more likely to be outspending. Reporter Sarah Chaney-Kambon looked into this for us. Sarah, thanks for being with us.
Thanks so much for having me, JR.
You know, this kind of seems counterintuitive. Millions of people got vaccinated to protect themselves, but they're still not going out as much as those who aren't. What do you think is going on?
I think what's going on here is that we're still in the early stages of this. A lot of people are still not fully vaccinated who plan to become fully vaccinated. Public health guidance is still shifting. And so right now. Vaccinated people are just, as one analyst said, proceeding with cautious optimism. They're still going out more than they used to. They're just not going out as much as people who aren't vaccinated, which has been kind of the case throughout this crisis. Even before vaccines were available, people who aren't vaccinated tended to go out more and just kind of live life as normal, if you will.
So you spoke with people who are tracking this data. And in terms of the types of businesses that people are venturing out to, where are we seeing significant differences in spending between people who are vaccinated and those who are not?
The data I was looking at showed that vaccinated consumers are going out a lot less to places like restaurants, movie theaters, salons, amusement parks. So all of these sorts of businesses that are service sector businesses that require some sort of in-person contact, vaccinated consumers are still just not going out to those places as much. So one example is entertainment venues.
Which venues show the biggest spending gap between vaccinated and unvaccinated people?
So think concert venues, theaters, that sort of place. Spending at entertainment venues was up about 20% among people who don't plan to get the vaccine. That's in April compared with January 2020, whereas it was up about 10% among vaccinated people. So you're seeing a pretty wide gap there between vaccinated consumers and people who don't plan to get the vaccine.
Now, when you refer to people who aren't vaccinated, who are spending more, who does that include?
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