The pandemic recession is over. At least it is according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research Monday.
In fact, the committee said the recession was over since April of last year and lasted for two months.
But if you ask Mike Schwitter if the recession is over, the New York-based actor, who was on tour with “Les Misérables” before the pandemic, will put it bluntly: “No”.
“Broadway, off-Broadway, none of that is 100% back yet. We’re still in a bit of a limbo,” he said.
But Schwitter is not the National Bureau of Economic Research, which defines recessions very specifically.
“The typical way we think of a recession is to look at the movement from the peak of economic activity before it descends back to the trough, which signifies the low point in terms of economic activity,” said Matthew Luzzetti. , Chief US Economist at Deutsche Bank.
A recession is a period between when the economy begins to fall and when it has finished falling and begins to recover. This means that the end of a recession is not when things are going well, but when they are, in fact, at their lowest.
For this recession, it was April, and it was pretty low.
“This is the deepest recession since World War II,” said KPMG chief economist Constance Hunter.
Unemployment rose from 3.5% to 14.8% in two months; the snow 5.9%. And there are still 6.8 million fewer people employed than before COVID.
“We are in the recovery phase. It doesn’t mean we’ve recovered, ”Hunter said.
But this recovery has been incredibly rapid, as has the recession itself. Related to Great Recession, which lasted 18 months and took nearly 10 years to recover, this recession only lasted two months.
It’s “faster than most recoveries, in part because of the vaccines and the huge fiscal policy response,” said Jason furman, who teaches economics at Harvard University.
Thanks to government assistance, household incomes increased during the recession, which is unprecedented and allowed consumers to rebound faster.
The economy measured in gross domestic product will be as if there has never been a pandemic by the end of this year, according to Luzzetti of Deutsche Bank.
In terms of jobs, KPMG’s Hunter said we will be fully recovered by the middle of 2022.
Oh, and Schwitter, the actor?
He is in real estate until the cinemas reopen. And he said the business was booming.
