The economists said employment peaked in February and fell sharply afterward, marking the beginning of the downturn.
The U. S. economy entered a recession in February, a group of economists declared Monday, ending the longest expansion on record just as the novel coronavirus began swiftly spreading across the country.
The economists said employment peaked in February and fell sharply afterward, marking the beginning of the downturn as cases of COVID-19 metastasized throughout the U. S., soon killing thousands, shutting down millions of businesses and sparking stay-at-home orders for much of the nation’s population by mid-March.
What a difference a pandemic can make: Just weeks earlier in February, the jobless rate stood at 3.5%, the lowest rate in 50 years, and employers in February had added 273,000 workers. The subsequent job losses — tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans from March to May — were the steepest ever seen in the U. S.
The economists who declared the recession’s start make up a committee within the National Bureau of Economic Research, a trade group that determines when recessions begin and end.
