How bad a year was 2020? During the year, the United States economy lost a net 9.4 million jobs — 6.2% of the jobs it had at the end of 2019. That is by far the largest annual decline since 1950. The years that included the financial crisis more than a decade ago had seen the largest losses of jobs, with a 3.7% decline in 2009 following a 2.6% fall in 2008. The year just ended was a little worse than the two of them combined.

The United States, unlike many countries, releases its GDP figures as annual rates. That makes no sense now, when there are clearly forces at work that will not continue for quarters to come. It makes more sense to say the economy contracted 9.0% in the second quarter and expanded 7.1% in the third quarter.

Friday’s employment report indicates almost half of the jobs that vanished in the Pandemic have been recovered.. But there are some industries where there has been hardly any recovery – and those are mostly businesses that will not come back completely until there is a widespread belief that COVID-19 is no longer a threat to what used to be considered normal activities.

Source: The Conference Board Remember the sunny forecasts when the Pandemic began? This was to be a brief recession, followed by a “V” shaped recovery. You could see that forecast […]

It is tempting to look at the continued recovery of the labor market in July and be encouraged – even if there are indications that August may see a reversal. […]

One number stands out in today’s estimate of second quarter GDP, and it isn’t the overall real GDP decline of 32.9%, on an annualized basis, even though the headlines will […]

The new Quinnipiac Poll, released Wednesday, finds that – for the first time this year – more people disapprove than approve of the way President Trump is handling the economy. […]

Many older Americans reacted to the financial crisis of 2008 by deciding not to retire. Some who had retired went back to work if they could do so. And that […]

The United States may be on the verge of an unfortunate accomplishment rarely reached in the last century: a presidential four-year term in which real per capita GDP was lower […]

The private sector added jobs in May almost everywhere in the United States. The public sector lost jobs, also almost everywhere. Those two trends seem likely to persist in the […]

Just how bad is the economic outlook? These days the answer seems to depend on the politics of the person being asked. The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index is released weekly, […]

There are 50 states, but only 13 where the 2016 presidential election was decided by a margin of less than eight percentage points. Six of them went for Hillary Clinton […]