HIGHLY UNUSUAL FEATURES OF THE 2020 U.S. RECESSION

On June 8, 2020, a group of economists declared that the U.S. economy entered a recession as the Covid 19 struck the nation, thereby ending the longest economic expansion on record. They concluded that employment, income, and spending peaked in February 2020 and then fell sharply afterward as the coronavirus shut down businesses across the country, marking the start of the downturn after nearly 11 full years of economic growth. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has become the official arbiter of recessions. It broadly defines a recession as “a decline in economic activity that lasts more than a few months.” For that reason, the NBER typically waits longer before making a determination that the economy is in a downturn. In the Covid 19 recession, the NBER did not declare that the economy was in recession until July 19, 2021, a year after it had actually begun. The major objective of this article is designed to discuss four unusual features of the latest recession: 1) the major cause of the recession, 2) the K-shape recovery, and 3) the government rescue effort, and 4) inflation spike.