Unemployment, Beef, And Ranchers

With the occurrence of Covid-19 massive business shutdowns and consequential unemployment rates lead to economic shocks to the beef industry. Cattle ranchers use futures predictions on the beef market to assess stocks of cattle (feeder cattle) that are intermediate goods in the food industry. The unemployment and closure of restaurants combined caused a major shock to beef consumption. China was set to buy large quantities of USDA choice beef in 2019, until the pandemic. Cattle ranchers were severely impacted. In a simplified study, I ran numbers for unemployment, stock of feeder cattle, and price of corn, in an analysis of price impact on the market. an eighty-one percent correlation shows an 11 cent increase in price of beef for every one percent increase in unemployment. Cattle ranchers feared needing to slaughter cattle to waste due to capacity. The regression report with references and data are included below.