Tag: recession

Two Economists Forecast What’s Ahead In 2023: A Possible Recession, Inflation, Unemployment, And The Housing Crisis
BUSINESS, IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

Two Economists Forecast What’s Ahead In 2023: A Possible Recession, Inflation, Unemployment, And The Housing Crisis

With the current U.S. inflation rate at 7.1%, interest rates rising and housing costs up, many Americans are wondering if a recession is looming. Two economists discussed that and more in a recent wide-ranging and exclusive interview for The Conversation. Brian Blank is a finance professor at Mississippi State University who specializes in the study of corporations and how they respond to economic downturns. Rodney Ramcharan is an economist at the University of Southern California who previously held posts with the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund. Both were interviewed by Bryan Keogh, deputy managing editor and senior editor of economy and business for The Conversation. Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. B...
One Of America’s Deepest Downturns Was Also Its Shortest After COVID-19 Recession Bailout Bounceback
Journalism

One Of America’s Deepest Downturns Was Also Its Shortest After COVID-19 Recession Bailout Bounceback

Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University Thanks to a roaring economy, plunging joblessness and a consumer spending spree, it probably won’t come as a surprise that the COVID-19 recession is officially over. We didn’t know this, formally, however, until July 19, 2021, when a group of America’s top economists determined that the pandemic recession ended two months after it began, making it the shortest downturn on record. As an economist who has written a macroeconomics textbook, I was eagerly waiting to know the official dates. This is in part because I recently asked my Boston University MBA students to make guesses, and we all wanted to know who was closest to the mark. While many of my students ended up nailing it, I was off by a month. But why did it take over a year to learn the recessio...
The Women’s Recession Isn’t Over — Especially For Moms
MONEY

The Women’s Recession Isn’t Over — Especially For Moms

One year since the start of the women’s recession, hundreds of thousands of moms have been forced to leave their jobs — and grapple with the consequences. Chabeli Carrazana Originally published by The 19th It struck her one morning last July, when an email arrived from her son’s day care. In a flash of clarity, Emily Way knew her time in the workforce was about to end. The day care that their 2-year-old, Owen, attended was reopening in August, the email read, and families needed to start paying again if they wanted to save a spot. Way was seven months pregnant and on the cusp of unpaid maternity leave. She knew she and her husband couldn’t afford to send Owen back while she wasn’t getting a paycheck. Even if he did go back, what about the virus? Someone needed to care for both kids ful...
9.8 Million Americans Have Been Pushed Further Into Food Insecurity Due To The Pandemic Recession
IN OTHER NEWS

9.8 Million Americans Have Been Pushed Further Into Food Insecurity Due To The Pandemic Recession

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed hardship on millions of vulnerable Americans through unemployment and reduced work hours. And this has increased food insecurity across the nation. CC BY-ND There is no official figure yet for how many more families are struggling to provide regular meals around the table – the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s next annual report on food insecurity, defined as a lack of access to sufficient food due to limited financial resources, won’t be out until the fall. But for me as an academic who has long tracked food insecurity trends, working out the increase in the number of people affected and projecting what will happen next is important. By understanding this, experts can work out whether what is occurring during the pandemic is likely to follow – or brea...
Black Americans are bearing the brunt of coronavirus recession – this should come as no surprise
HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Black Americans are bearing the brunt of coronavirus recession – this should come as no surprise

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in April, many Americans were shocked by the extent that black Americans were being disproportionately impacted: higher infection rates, more deaths and greater job loss. But many black Americans were not surprised. This is not new. The same dynamic has been going on at times of crisis for decades and generations. As a labor economist and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under the Clinton administration, I know that history has shown that black Americans consistently bear the brunt of recessions and natural disasters. Economic history repeating itself Prior to this pandemic, the worst economic downturns in post-World War II America were the 1981-82 recession and the Great Recession that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Duri...
We are entering a recession – but what did we learn from the last one?
IN OTHER NEWS

We are entering a recession – but what did we learn from the last one?

As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, it is abundantly clear that the global economy is entering a recession – the first we’ve seen since 2008. Some officials have compared the last period of economic decline – also know as the Great Recession – to the Depression, which began in 1929. Yet it is clear that these two downturns differed not only in severity but also in the consequences they had for inequality in the United States. Though the Depression was bigger and longer than the Great Recession, the decades following the Great Depression substantially reduced the wealth of the rich and improved the economic security of many workers. In contrast, the Great Recession exacerbated both income and wealth inequality. Some scholars have attributed this phenomenon to a weak...
Stocks are plummeting – could coronavirus cause a recession?
BUSINESS, COVID-19

Stocks are plummeting – could coronavirus cause a recession?

Fears are growing that the new coronavirus will infect the U.S. economy. U.S stocks are headed for their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; companies including Apple and Walmart have been warning of potential sales losses from COVID-19 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans to prepare for the outbreak to spread to the United States, with unknown but potentially “bad” consequences. Lately, many people have asked me, as an economist, a question I haven’t heard in years: Could a virus really send the global and U.S. economies into recession – or worse? Put more pertinently, will COVID-19 trigger an economic meltdown? What a virus can do The worry is understandable; viruses are scary things. I’ve read my share of medical thrillers based on some new virus...