12 States Where April Working-Age Death Counts Look Bad

The U.S. death count for people of all ages was between 5% to 7% higher in April than the pre-pandemic normal level for April, according to the very earliest mortality data. The all-cause death count for people ages 25 through 64 was 2.2% lower than the typical pre-pandemic count for April, but in eight states, the number of deaths of people in that age group was at least 8% higher than the pre-pandemic normal. For a look at those 12 states, see the gallery above. For working-age mortality numbers for all 50 states and some other jurisdictions, see the table below.

What It Means

Clients may be able to give up on masks and go dancing, but careful life insurance and retirement planners have to be open to the possibility that clients' life expectancy might continue to be harder to predict than before 2020. That could affect how much life insurance clients should have and decisions about how much cash retired clients should draw from their assets.

The Data

Following the official end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is cutting back on providing data related to the COVID-19 pandemic, but some death-rate tracking resources are still out there. One set of figures, a CDC spreadsheet that gives complete death counts by state per week, including figures adjusted for completeness for the most recent weeks, shows that the total death count in April was 234,278, or 5.4% higher than the average for April in 2017, 2018 and 2019. A second set of early death data, the collection of mortality spreadsheets accompanying the CDC's weekly FluView report, shows that, as of early May, the raw, unadjusted national death count for April, for people of all ages, was 218,247. That was up 7.3% from the FluView total for April 2019, as of early May 2019, and it was up 20% from the average April death count for 2017, 2018 and 2019, as reported in early May in the corresponding years. The April FluView death figures include about 4,800 people who had confirmed cases of COVID-19; about 14,000 people who had pneumonia that was not classified as COVID-19 pneumonia; and people who died from other causes, such as heart attacks and cancer. One reason for the lack of attention given to the relatively high death April death count is that the April death count was much lower than the catastrophic January 2022 death count. In the four first weeks of January 2022, 330,730 people died, according to the FluView data. But April 2022 was a month when pandemic mortality fell sharply, and the number of deaths recorded in April 2023 for people of all ages from all causes is 6% higher than the number recorded in April 2022, according to the FluView data. Another reason for the lack of attention may be that, in April, increased mortality affected older people more than younger people: The CDC spreadsheet with the adjusted data shows the death count for U.S. residents ages 70 and older was 11% higher in April than the 2017-2019 baseline.

Insurers' Perspective

Paul Mahon, the CEO of Great-West Lifeco, talked about U.S. mortality levels last week, during a conference call with securities analysts. "One of the things that we saw in the quarter was higher-than-expected mortality," Mahon said. "Interestingly, our reinsurance business in U.S. traditional life reinsurance is kind of a bellwether, and other insurers are seeing the same thing in the U.S." The increased mortality could be the result of influenza or factors other than COVID-19, Mahon said. Chris Neczypor, Lincoln Financial's chief financial officer, said during that company's call that mortality is lower than it has been in recent years but still enough above the pre-pandemic normal to be a headwind.

Working-age deaths in April, vs. the average for April from 2017-2019