Jan 2, 2025 - News

New data suggest why homicides jumped in Philly during the pandemic

A man holds a sign depicting a gun and the skyline of Philadelphia with the words "Killadelphia." — A group called Stop Killing Us rallied outside Philly City Hall to call attention to a jump in homicides on April 21, 2020. Photo: Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images

New data suggest that the nationwide homicide surge of 2020 was driven largely by men and teen boys who were either laid off or saw their schools close during pandemic shutdowns.

Why it matters: Record spikes in homicides during the COVID-19 crisis puzzled officials, and some blamed social unrest and mass protests. But a Brookings Institution analysis reviewed by Axios indicates that alienated men and youths, especially in low-income areas, likely were behind the jump.

Catch up quick: U.S. cities saw their homicide rates surge by an average of nearly 30% in 2020, the biggest year-over-year jump in recorded U.S. history.

Homicide rates ticked up for two more years until 2023, when rates started to plummet.
In Philly, homicides spiked 39% in 2020 over the previous year and hit a peak in 2021 at 538 before starting a downward trend, per police data.

Zoom out: The Brookings findings were based on thousands of police records before and after the 2020 homicide surge.

Cities with larger numbers of young men forced out of work and teen boys pushed out of school in low-income neighborhoods in March and early April 2020 averaged greater increases in homicides from May to December that year than other areas, the analysis found.
Unemployment and truancy also help explain why homicides remained high in 2021 and 2022 and then fell in late 2023 and 2024, the analysis found.

Zoom in: Almost all the neighborhoods with the highest homicide rates were places where at least 30% of the residents lived below the poverty line, which in 2020 was about $26,200 in income for a household of four.

In Philly, 75% of the homicides between 2019-23 occurred in neighborhoods with persistent concentrated poverty, per the report.

By mid-April 2020, young men laid off because of the pandemic and high school boys whose schools were shut down made up about 1 in 30 of those living in low-income neighborhoods, Brookings found.

Many of the men had worked for restaurants and hotels, industries and the pandemic disproportionally hit them, the report found.
Many students pushed out of school often didn't have access to high-speed internet for online classes.

What we're watching: Philly Mayor Cherelle Parker, the school district and a handful of charters are standing up a new extended-day and -year schooling program in the fall that will offer programming and a safe space for students beyond class hours.

Go deeper: Jobless men, bored teens linked to pandemic homicide jump

Add Axios on Google

New data suggest why homicides jumped in Philly during the pandemic

More Philadelphia stories