On Thursday, President Donald Trump sparked a firestorm after suggesting on Twitter that the 2020 election should be postponed and claiming without evidence that mail-in voting would lead to massive fraud.
Trump’s earlier tweet was decried by many Republican lawmakers who understand that Congress, not the President, sets election days.
But the tweet was a clear attempt to limit attention to appalling new data Thursday that showed a stunning 32.9% annualized contraction in the economy in the second quarter amid coronavirus shutdowns — the worst slump in history, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.
Business ground to a halt during the pandemic lockdown in the spring of this year, and America plunged into its first recession in 11 years, putting an end to the longest economic expansion in US history.
Don't Miss
But this is no ordinary recession. The combination of public health and economic crises is unprecedented, and numbers cannot fully convey the hardships millions of Americans are facing.
In April, more than 20 million American jobs vanished as businesses closed and most of the country was under stay-at-home orders. It was the biggest drop in jobs since record-keeping began more than 80 years ago. Claims for unemployment benefits skyrocketed and have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
While the labor market has been slowly rebounding since states began to reopen, bringing millions back to work, the country is still down nearly 15 million jobs since February. Next week’s July jobs report is expected to show another 2.3 million jobs added. That would bring the unemployment rate down to 10.3% — still higher than during the worst period of the financial crisis.
Consumer spending, the biggest driver of the US economy, declined at an annual rate of 34.6% — by far the sharpest decline on record.
The worst quarter ever.
