Roundup: Three perspectives on how the pandemic will hit Florida’s pocketbook

Florida likely will take a big economic hit from the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, according to three separate reports.

Florida ranked high on a new WalletHub survey that ranks states based on how affected small businesses are by Covid-19.

Florida came in No. 16 among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to WalletHub, a personal finance website.

Florida leads the states with the worst small business credit conditions, a metric that includes the average interest rate on SBA loans and  the share of small business loans that have defaulted or are past due, WalletHub said. But Florida has other factors in its favor, most notably high demand by consumers for the industries most impacted by Covid-19 such as travel, recreation and dining out.

A separate report from Axios also raises concerns about Florida’s economy.

State and local tax revenue are falling and spending is growing due to added unemployment and medical obligations in every state, Axios said, but Florida could be one of the most critical cases. The state is in the top 10 for its dependence on sales taxes, and its rainy day fund represents less than 5 percent of annual expenditures, according to Axios.

Rainy day funds — or revenue stabilization funds — are designed to prepare states for inevitable downturns and increasingly are a standard component of states’ budgeting process, said the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy nonprofit.

Florida’s rainy day fund covers 4.6 percent of general fund expenditures, ranking the state No. 40 on this map from the Tax Foundation.

Another study, by Oxford Economics, put Florida in the top four for states “most structurally vulnerable” to the economic fallout.

The report looked at 10 factors such as trade openness, demographics, share of hospitality and tourism, retail, manufacturing and internet access. The top three states were Maine, Nevada and Vermont, followed by Florida.

“A state like New York, which is currently the epicenter of the crisis, is actually less vulnerable to second-round hits in terms of economic activities,” Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told Yahoo Finance. “But states like Florida, Maine, Vermont and Nevada are highly susceptible to big drags on economic output and big employment losses because of this type of shock.”