Based on some of these comments, the degree to which so many are out of touch is unbelievable. 17 MILLION people have filed for unemployment and I'm sure this week will be another 6M as companies don't keep this much cash on hand.<p>Tech's been living in a bubble for a long time and reality is starting to hit. Get out and talk to real people, not your Slack buddies working in SF.
This certainly feels real to me. Yesterday, I was laid off from my job at Easypost. We had a very big and very painful layoff because my company took on way too much leverage. The circumstances of COVID19 were tough to foresee but I really wish we hadn't taken on so much debt while times were good.<p>I have experience in Go, Ruby, Python and I'm excited to hack again.
The economy is basically a big network of relationships; employee relationships, business relationships, etc. Unfortunately such relationships tend to break quickly and in a self reinforcing cascade but can only be rebuilt slowly as businesses find that there is enough profit margin and demand to bring new people in, one at a time. That’s why recessions happen quickly and recovery time is proportional to how many people lose their jobs. You look at unemployment data for the last 50 years and the pattern is very simple: a rapid increase in unemployment and a steady recovery. The higher the spike, the longer the recovery. That being the case I would guess that the recovery from this shock will take a decade or more.<p><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/April-Jobs-Report-1-820x493.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/April-...</a><p>Edit: I can’t make new posts. Someone has suggested that people will just be re-hired; historically, that has never happened. Not saying it’s impossible but this would be the first time. You can’t put a broken egg back together; entropy doesn’t go in reverse. The old jobs don’t come back, new ones are created, that’s just the way it works.
From the horse's mouth: <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020" rel="nofollow">https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/we...</a>
The important question is whether the recession due to the lockdown (which is at least useful for stopping the virus) will continue after the virus has passed and the lockdown is lifted.
As a total dummy on macroeconomics, I find myself having the positive take "hey, we were probably moving towards some recession anyway, might as well get it over with in one go". I'm saying this because the graphs go up again in the not too distant future. Besides the obvious personal suffering that is going to be the consequence of this event on at least the short term, and under the uncertain assumption that we're making some return to normal life in 2020, is there any merit towards my naive optimism?
I mean, by default, any economic crisis is always going to be worse than/bigger than the previous, just due to growth. Am I wrong for thinking this way?
The unemployment rate isn't even close to the 10% we saw after the '08 recession. Only about half. Does that mean that twice as many people are going to become unemployed, than are right now?
On the other hand, new streams of revenue as well as increases in existing revenue streams are emerging as a result of the lockdowns.<p>The question is, will these increases fully offset the permanent loss of existing revenues + the cascading costs of disruption due to things like job losses.
I think historians will look back at COVID-19 as a textbook way not to handle an emergency.<p>They will point out that 99% of deaths were related to economic effects of our response, not the disease itself.<p>Hundreds of millions will starve or die in failed states in an economic slowdown, while only hundreds of thousands die of disease.
I find myself less interested in whether or not something is a recession or not. I mean, sure, the numbers of the economy are going down, but the big numbers don't necessarily mean much for anyone's personal life. Of course it can; losing your job is no fun. But the big reason why the Great Depression was so bad, is that we didn't have any social security back then. Unemployed meant having no income at all. No health insurance, no pensions, none of the things that people started fighting for exactly because of the Great Depression.<p>And because of that, these recessions and depressions are far less devastating than they used to.<p>Of course I'm saying this living in a rich country that does have all of these amenities; in poorer countries that don't yet take care of their poor (and possibly the US that chooses not to take care of its poor), things may still feel like the 1930s. But in a rich, well-organised country, there's really no need for that anymore. We can easily get through this is we want to. Skip a vacation, buy a luxury item less, make sure the poorest don't fall through the cracks (and there will be more cracks of course), and we'll be fine. The misery is mostly a political decision.