|
The
committee, a group of macroeconomists who assign the start and
end dates of U.S. business cycles, said that while the country
had by no means gotten back to normal operating capacity at that
point, indicators of both jobs and production "point clearly to
April 2020 as the month of the trough," with a rebound beginning
in May.
Indeed, the resumption of growth was so rapid the committee said
it was only "the unprecedented magnitude of the decline" that
led members to consider what happened to be a recession in the
first place, with a downturn typically requiring "depth,
duration and diffusion" to qualify for the label.
Around 22 million jobs disappeared from company payrolls in
March and April of that year, an event that sparked concern
about a new Depression and led Congress and the White House to
approve the first of several massive relief packages to keep
firms and households afloat.
The designation of the recession's end date is of historical
note, but also relevant to research on the dynamics of business
cycles and, in this case, into how that historic policy response
played out.
The announcement makes the pandemic recession by far the
shortest on record, at two months only a third as long as the
six-month downturn at the start of 1980, and a fourth as long as
the recession that followed the collapse of the tech bubble in
2001.
That alone may feed arguments in favor of the "cash-first"
approach fiscal policymakers have taken to fighting this
pandemic through repeated household support payments, expanded
unemployment benefits, and liberal financing for small
businesses.
It also highlights the still open debate over how fast the U.S.
economy will get back to normal, and what that will mean.
Measured by output, the country may already have recovered;
measured by employment, it is still far short, with the biggest
economic scars threatening lower wage and less educated workers.
Amid what became a divisive national conversation over masks and
lockdowns, some 2.8 million people were brought back to work in
May of 2020, and over the next year about 15 million jobs were
recovered. More than 7 million jobs remain lost.
Employment "reached a clear trough in April before rebounding
strongly the next few months and then settling into a more
gradual rise," with incomes rising as well, the committee said
in a statement released through the National Bureau of Economic
Research.
With coronavirus infections again increasing and a national
immunization drive stalled with less than 60% of the eligible
population vaccinated, fears of a new slowdown have increased.
The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were both down
more than 2% by midday, and U.S. 10-year Treasury yields fell to
a 5-month low.
(Reporting by Howard SchneiderEditing by Nick Zieminski)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
