What was a mini-recession has turned into stalled economic recovery: economists
It was announced this spring that a recession began in February just as the coronavirus crisis was beginning to take down communities. But according to some economists, recovery from that recession has been slowed.
Bloomberg News reported Monday that unemployment numbers combined with high-frequency indicators of economic activity revealed things aren't going well.
"Payrolls remain 13 million below pre-pandemic levels and the number of people out of work for 15 weeks or longer more than doubled from the prior month, to 8 million," said the report. "The labor-force participation rate fell for the first time in three months and the number of people discouraged by job prospects hit a five-year high."
“There’s definitely a lot of work to be done in getting the economy back to where it used to be,” said JPMorgan Chase chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli.
“When we look at where we go from here, we’re past that mechanical bounceback,” said senior economist at Wells Fargo Sarah House. “Now you have to justify, from a cost perspective, bringing back new workers. And for that you need revenue to increase” and economic activity to improve, she said.
“This slowing trend in the economic recovery is deeply concerning,” said senior economist Daniel Zhao, who works at the jobs website Glassdoor. “The risk is that will spill over to businesses and the rest of the economy, as well as households.”
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump attempted to manufacture a recovery with a series of executive orders that experts speculate won't actually help with anything other than the president's headlines.
Trump’s order to provide more stimulus “doesn’t change the overriding fact that the public health crisis will determine the trajectory of the economy,” Zhao told Bloomberg.
The report closed by warning that the longer it takes for the economy to recover, the worse it will be for the the jobs market and for wages.
Leave a Comment
Related Post