{"id":52699,"date":"2020-04-22T18:35:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T23:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52699"},"modified":"2020-04-22T18:35:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T23:35:26","slug":"how-far-will-the-u-s-economy-plunge-during-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52699","title":{"rendered":"How Far Will the U.S. Economy Plunge During Lockdown?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2020\/04\/21\/how-far-will-u-s-economy-gdp-plunge-during-lockdowns\/\">How Far Will the U.S. Economy Plunge During Lockdown?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cThree times deeper than the Great Recession?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No one has ever been through an economy where enormous shifts have occurred, from one day to the next, shutting down part of the economy but also generating sectors that are vastly more vibrant than ever before. Monthly or quarterly economic indicators leave us in the dark because they lag too far behind and are at the moment largely useless. What we need is high-frequency data \u2013 daily and weekly that track this shifting economy in near-real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, there has been an enormous boom in ecommerce \u2013 but we won\u2019t get ecommerce data for Q1 until mid-May and for Q2 until August. Best Buy&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/investors.bestbuy.com\/investor-relations\/news-and-events\/financial-releases\/news-details\/2020\/Best-Buy-Provides-Business-Update-Related-to-COVID-19\/default.aspx\">reported<\/a>&nbsp;last week that its online sales had surged by 250% but that it would furlough 51,000 hourly store employees as stores were closed to customers, allowing only for curbside pickup. That duality that is now widespread impacts the economy in strange ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grocery store and supermarket sales \u2013 which are normally the epitome of slow and steady growth tied to inflation and population growth \u2013 are suddenly booming. Kroger&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/ir.kroger.com\/file\/Index?KeyFile=403472343\">reported<\/a>&nbsp;a 30% surge in \u201cidentical retail supermarket sales without fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anything having to do with working-at-home, including hardware sales, is booming. Everything and anything that is online is booming \u2014 as are the sectors that make it all work, including delivery services. And there are other sectors that are suddenly hot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But other parts of the economy have essentially collapsed, with near-zero revenues, such as sit-down restaurants, sports &amp; entertainment events, or the entire travel and accommodations industry, including airlines and hotels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some manufacturing plants are operating, but many others are not. Much of the construction industry has shut down. Housing and auto sales are still ongoing, but at far lower levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Far Will the U.S. Economy Plunge During Lockdown? \u201cThree times deeper than the Great Recession?\u201d No one has ever been through an economy where enormous shifts have occurred, from one day to the next, shutting down part of the economy but also generating sectors that are vastly more vibrant than ever before. Monthly or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[426,2144,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-52699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-inflation","tag-lockdown","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52700,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52699\/revisions\/52700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}