White House officials reportedly won’t release updated economic projections this summer, choosing not to publish forecasts that would reflect the depths of the downturn.
The White House is breaking with precedent in choosing to forgo projections that are typically released in July or August with expectations for trends such as growth, unemployment, and inflation, according to the Washington Post. The forecast has been provided every year since at least the 1970s, including by the Obama administration during the Great Recession.
White House officials said the coronavirus pandemic has caused so much volatility in the economy that it is challenging to predict economic trends.
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Bill Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Republican staff director for the Senate Budget Committee, said, “There is no logistical reason they couldn’t do it. It seems more likely they do not want to bring attention to the high level of unemployment they’d have to project for this year and into next year.”
Since the pandemic struck, 41 million workers have claimed unemployment benefits, and economists expect that a “W-shaped,” weak and fragile economic recovery is more likely than the “V-shaped” or rapid one predicted by many in the Trump administration.
