Recession Ready

In this blog post, Lauren Bauer, Abigail Pitts, Krista Ruffini, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach find that Pandemic EBT reduced food hardship experienced by low-income families with children and lifted at least 2.7-3.9 million children out of hunger.

The COVID-19 public health crisis, the economic shock triggered by the pandemic, and public policy, business, and individual responses to the pandemic together have provoked the sharpest and fastest economic downturn in U.S. history. Wendy Edelberg and Jay Shambaugh discuss how the current crisis fits into historic context and what will be the long-lasting economic consequences. 

David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds ask whether the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the conventional wisdom about automation and inequality in the United States over the past four decades. They make four projections about a rapidly automating post-COVID-19 economy: increasing telework, city de-densification, large-firm consolidation, and forced automation, all of which have significant, negative consequences for low wage workers and economic inequality. 

The economic crisis in the wake of the pandemic is changing the business landscape, exacerbating concerns about the state of competition in the U.S. economy.  Nancy Rose documents how some large, well-positioned firms have dramatically increased their market share, accelerating trends seen prior to the pandemic. 

The economic damages of the COVID-19 pandemic are not being well captured by current labor market statistics that show both permanent damage to employment relationships and labor force attachment as well as a surge of workers who have experienced a temporary loss of work and income. In this essay, Betsey Stevenson of the University of Michigan explores the many ways the COVID-19 recession has affected the labor market, showing that the labor market effects have not been evenly borne across workers and that the scarring effects of this recession will likely lead to high long-term unemployment and weakened labor market attachment for years to come.   

In 2017, over 15 million workers (about 10 percent of the total U.S. workforce) were in alternative work arrangements. In this economic analysis, Ryan Nunn and Jimmy O'Donnell explore the characteristics of these workers, analyze their unique economic outcomes, and assess policy reforms that can help provide more security for these workers.