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Worst Economy in a Decade. What’s Next? ‘Worst in Our Lifetime.’
U.S. gross domestic product declined in the first quarter, dragged down by the pandemic’s grip in March. Don’t even ask about this quarter.
By Ben Casselman
April 29, 2020
full article at nytimes.com
extended excerpt:
The coronavirus pandemic officially snapped the United States’ economic growth streak in the first three months of the year. The question now is how deep the damage will get — and how long the country will take to recover.
U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services output, fell at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is the first decline since 2014, and the worst quarterly contraction since 2008, when the country was in a deep recession.
There is much worse to come. Widespread layoffs and business closings didn’t hit until late March in most of the country. Economists expect figures from the current quarter, which will capture the shutdown’s impact more fully, to show that G.D.P. contracted at an annual rate of 30 percent or more, a scale not seen since the Great Depression.
“They’re going to be the worst in our lifetime,” Dan North, chief economist for the credit insurance company Euler Hermes North America, said of the second-quarter figures. “They’re going to be the worst in the post-World War II era.”
The Federal Reserve pledged Wednesday to use its full range of tools to mitigate the effects of the downturn and restore the economy to health. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said Congress, too, would most likely have to do more.
“The depth and the duration of the economic downturn are extraordinarily uncertain,” Mr. Powell said Wednesday. “It may well be the case that the economy will need more support from all of us if the recovery is going to be a robust one.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said this week that he expected the economy to “ really bounce back” this summer as states lift stay-home orders and trillions of dollars in federal emergency spending reaches businesses and households. But most independent economists are much less optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office last week released projections indicating that the economy will begin growing again in the second half of the year but that the G.D.P. won’t return to its pre-pandemic level until 2022 at the earliest.
The Commerce Department estimates that were issued on Wednesday are preliminary and based on incomplete data, particularly for March. The speed of the economic shift means that revisions could be large, and some economists expect final figures, due later this spring, to show an even bigger decline.
But the data, however incomplete, hinted at the breadth of the damage. Consumer spending, the bedrock of the decade-long economic expansion, fell at a 7.6 percent rate. Business investment, which had already been struggling in part because of the trade war, fell for the fourth straight quarter. Imports and exports both declined sharply as the pandemic brought global trade to a near standstill.
The pandemic has hit the service sector particularly hard: Restaurants are closed, flights are nearly empty, and stadiums have sat unused for weeks. Spending on services fell at a 10.2 percent rate in the first quarter, and spending at restaurants and hotels was down nearly 30 percent on an annual basis. Consumers even spent less on health care, as they put off appointments and canceled elective procedures.
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When the new coronavirus began to spread in the United States this year, many economists expected a “V-shaped” recovery, with a sharp downturn followed by an equally swift rebound. But those projections were mostly predicated on a short pause in activity that could be quickly reversed. As lockdowns have stretched into a second month — and with disruptions likely to continue for weeks or months in many states — those hopes have faded.
With each month of unpaid bills and rock-bottom sales, more businesses will go bankrupt or decide not to reopen. More workers will drift away from their employers, turning temporary layoffs into permanent job losses. More loans will lapse into delinquency, endangering banks and the broader financial system.
“The longer things stay shut down, the harder it’s going to be to turn it back on again,” said Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University.
Those consequences have led President Trump and other elected officials — particularly Republican governors in states with relatively few coronavirus cases — to push to reopen the economy as quickly as possible. Several states have started to do so, and others, including large ones like Texas and Florida, will begin to at the end of the month.
But economists and epidemiologists say moving too quickly threatens both public health and economic growth. The United States is not performing nearly as many coronavirus tests as health officials say are necessary to detect and contain new outbreaks. Until that happens, a robust economic rebound won’t be possible, said Karen Dynan, a Harvard economist who was a Treasury official in the Obama administration.
“You could lift the restrictions tomorrow and the economy would still not come back if people don’t feel safe to go out,” she said. As a result, “measures that we normally consider to be public health measures are in this case a really important component of the economic policy response.”
Nader Masadeh, chief executive of Buffalo Wings & Rings, a restaurant chain based in Ohio, remembers when he realized the coronavirus was coming for his business: March 12. That was the day that Gov. Mike DeWine announced a ban on large gatherings in the state, and when the National Collegiate Athletic Association canceled the annual men’s basketball tournament that is Mr. Masadeh’s biggest draw.
“That’s when we realized this is really for real,” he said.
Mr. Masadeh quickly formed two teams. The first focused on ensuring that the business could survive the shutdown by cutting costs wherever possible — renegotiating leases and canceling contracts for linens, window cleaning and music service — and looking for ways to generate revenue through online ordering and curbside pickup.
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“The impact of it is way unknown, so cash preservation becomes your No. 1 priority,” Mr. Masadeh said.
The second team focused on reopening: How could the company put diners at ease once restaurants resumed business? Plastic menus are being replaced by disposable paper. Staff members will wear masks and gloves. Tables will be farther apart. Cleaning standards, already high, will be higher.
Mr. Masadeh is eager to reopen. But he is also nervous. He has been able to push off bills during the shutdown, but once it ends, vendors and lenders will expect payments. Rehiring and retraining workers will be expensive. And he doesn’t know how quickly customers will come back.
“The biggest fear that I’m thinking about is that we reopen and the number of infections ramps back up again and they say, ‘Whoa, we made a mistake,’” he said. “We cannot afford a second shutdown. We only have one shot at reopening, and if we miss it or don’t get it right, then the inevitable will happen.”
continues at nytimes.com |
