Governor Newsom released his May Revision to the 2022-23 budget on May 13, 2022. Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, California was experiencing the longest economic expansion since WWII (began following the Great Recession in 2009). While the negative consequences of the pandemic have been severe, they do not appear to have been as catastrophic from a fiscal standpoint as the 2021 Budget Act anticipated, and the state has experienced a quicker rebound than expected with greater General Fund revenues. However, the recovery has been uneven—many low-income Californians remain out of work, while most high-income earners have largely been spared from the impacts of the pandemic.
Better-than-expected tax collections have helped the state rebound from the pandemic-induced recession. The LAO Revenue Outlook from April 2022 predicted that revenue from the state’s “big three” taxes (income, sales, and corporation) will be between $33 billion and $39 billion higher than forecasted in the Governor’s January budget.
Unemployment: Prior to the pandemic, the unemployment rate in California was at a historic low of 3.5%—about one-third the Great Recession peak of 12.3%. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the California unemployment rate reached a record 16.4% in April and May 2020 (the U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 14.7% in April 2020). Since March 2020, 26.8 million unemployment claims have been filed in California and the state has paid out $182 billion in total benefits (includes the state benefit and the supplemental emergency benefit). Total state unemployment benefit payments in 2019 were $5 billion. The California unemployment rate was 8.5% as of February 2021 and 5.4% as of February 2022. As of April 2022, the unemployment rate in California was 4.6%, down from 4.8% in March and compared with a 3.6% unemployment rate for the U.S. overall.
Personal Income: U.S. personal income increased by 7.4% year-over-year from 2020 to 2021, while total personal income in California increased by 8.5% from 2020 to 2021.
Federal Relief: Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March 2020, the largest fiscal stimulus in U.S. history. Through the end of August 2020, over 153 million stimulus payments (up to $1,200 for single tax filers + $500 per qualifying child) were made in the U.S., including 18 million payments in California. The CARES Act provided support to businesses and added $600 per week to all unemployment benefits through July 31, 2020. Congress passed a second COVID-relief bill in December 2020 that provided another round of stimulus checks (up to $600 per individual), extended unemployment benefits and provided an additional $300 per week, and billions more for economic relief for businesses. Following the inauguration of the Biden administration, Congress passed another $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill (the American Rescue Plan) in March 2021. It provided approximately $26 billion to the state government and $16 billion to local governments in California, plus extended unemployment benefits, housing assistance, and other economic relief measures. A full accounting of California's share of funding (an estimated $150 billion total) from the American Rescue Plan can be found here (LAO).
