Don't Expect A Quick Recovery. Our Survey Of Economists Says It Will Likely Take Years.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

All across the country, the gears of the economy are grinding slowly and creakily into motion. Retail stores are newly open for in-person shopping in California. It’s possible to get a much-needed haircut in Alabama. And in Alaska, bartenders are even slinging drinks again — albeit with strict capacity and spacing limits.

The reopening of the economy might seem like a promising sign. After all, as shuttered stores and restaurants reopen, workers can return to their jobs or look for new positions, and industries that have seen slowdowns can resume operations. Some politicians — including President Trump — have promised a fast recovery.

But how quickly will the economy really be able to bounce back? How long will we be stuck with a double-digit unemployment rate and a host of other historically bad economic indicators?

We wanted to get a sense of what the experts were thinking. So we partnered with the Initiative on Global Markets, a research center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to survey a group of quantitative macroeconomic researchers who work in academic settings about the trajectory of the economic crisis. In consultation with Jonathan Wright of Johns Hopkins University and Allan Timmermann of the University of California, San Diego, two experts on macroeconomic forecasting, we asked the panel questions like what the shape of the recovery will resemble, when gross domestic product will return to its pre-crisis levels, and what the unemployment rate will be at the end of the year. The survey was conducted May 22 to 25.

Overall, the researchers predicted that although the economy will probably start to improve in the second half of this year, there won’t be a quick rally from this recession. “The panelists believe, on the whole, that the recovery from this crisis is going to be a very, very lengthy process,” Timmermann said. “We’re going to be seeing serious effects for years and years.”

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-expect-a-quick-recovery-our-survey-of-economists-says-it-will-likely-take-years/

[ProfessorGAC]

1. A Factor Missed By The Wall Street Optimists

Dead people are rotten consumers.
So are people who have UEI run out.
GDP is 70% consumer activity.
Even a quarter million dead is a 0.1% drag on GDP.
This is simple math. Why they don't grasp it is a mystery. Or, maybe not. After all, far too many of them are just players at the casino.

[2naSalit]

2. It will take a while for

all of this to sink in. People aren't going to jump back into the life we had before, it's not going to happen, so anyone looking to "return to normal" is going to have a rude awakening before long. The holiday shopping season is going to look really different this year. Tourist season is already toast.