At the end of 2020, Detroit was still lagging national employment recovery by a sizable margin. Detroit was 9.6% away from recovering all the jobs the market lost during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the nation overall was only 4.8% away from its pre-pandemic employment base totals. Out of the nation’s largest 50 apartment markets, Detroit was the furthest from full recovery as of December. Also lagging well behind was Orlando, which was 9.3% below pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020. When the nation overall started seeing its job base decline in March 2020, Detroit saw similar job cuts. When April hit, and U.S. job decline hit historic lows, the loss in Detroit was nearly double the national average.
