Phoenix's economic policy created after the Great Recession helped keep the city from suffering as badly as other U.S. cities during the COVID-19 shutdown, PHXNewsroom reported.

The policy change was made by the state, Phoenix and Valley cities and meant that in April, when the nation was seeing an unemployment rate of 14.7%, Valley cities only saw 12.6% unemployment, the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity told the PHXNewsroom. There were even cities in California that suffered upwards of 20% unemployment.

“This shows that government can influence the economy in positive ways,” Jim Rounds, private sector strategic economist and president of Rounds Consulting Group, told PHXNewsroom. “During the Great Recession, Arizona and cities finally put together a cohesive economic policy to go after high-value jobs.”

Before the pandemic, Valley cities had a record-low unemployment rate of 3.7%. In April, a job loss of 222,500 was reported, but those job losses were not in certain sectors. Manufacturing had no reported job losses and the aerospace, computer and electronic device production sub-sectors actually added 1,000 jobs.

Wholesale trade also added 1,200 jobs, while financial activities added 9,500 and bioscience healthcare added 10,100. Other sub-sectors have also added jobs, PHXNewsroom reported. 

“I think we see that despite the unprecedented job losses, changes in the composition of the workforce kept Arizona’s numbers better than the rest of the U.S.,” Doug Walls, labor market information director at the Arizona Economic Opportunity Office and lead of the state’s research team for workforce and employment information, told the news agency. “You look at some of the sectors, and our job losses were significantly less than the rest of the nation.”

After the Great Recession, mayors in the Valley cities decided to work together to advance the industries in the region, PHXNewsroom reported.