Economic output won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until mid-2022 or later, according to a plurality, 49%, of economists surveyed by the National Association of Business Economists.
The group’s poll tapped the opinions of 235 members, and “only one respondent expects GDP will reclaim its pre-COVID-19 level in 2020.”
Gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2019, before the pandemic struck, was $21.7 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate.
During the first and second quarters of 2020, that number fell to $21.6 trillion and $19.4 trillion, respectively, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The negative growth last quarter was by far the largest in U.S. history.
Rehiring workers laid off in the pandemic will take years, according to the NABE survey.
While 41% of economists expect nonfarm payrolls to regain their pre-pandemic level sometime in 2022, 34% expect that it will not occur before 2023, according to the polling.
A majority of the economists say that combating COVID-19 is the most important policy issue for the next presidential administration.
Recent spikes of the virus in certain parts of the country have already had a chilling effect on hiring. Several states have either rolled back or paused reopening their economies to help stem the increase of infections.
The latest jobs report signaled a slowdown in hiring. The economy gained 1.8 million jobs in July, but the growth was anemic relative to the 7.3 million jobs created in May and June and off the pace that would be needed to shrink the massive pool of jobless workers rapidly.
Another troubling sign is workers claiming unemployment benefits is on the rise. Jobless claims increased last week to 1.1 million after dropping below a million the week prior.
The coronavirus has erased millions of small businesses from the U.S. economy.
Before the pandemic hit the country in January, there were over 14 million small-business owners; by May, over 2 million of them had closed their doors, according to Robert Fairlie, an economist at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
For comparison, 730,000 small businesses closed during the Great Recession, from December 2007 to June 2009.
The prognosis for the rest of the year is that another 2 million small businesses could be lost by December, according to Oxxford Information Technology, a company that helps financial providers such as banks and credit unions grow their small-business customer base.
