Streets are empty and businesses have been shuttered in Jersey City, April 27, 2020, in Jersey City, New Jersey.Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Economists were expecting a decline in GDP of about 3.5% to 4%. This is the first negative GDP since the 1.1% decline in Q1 of 2014 and the largest decline since the recession in Q4 of 2008 when GDP dropped 8.4%.
Gita Gopinath, the economic counsellor and director of research at the IMF, referred to the contraction as “the Great Lockdown” in a blogpost, saying it will be “the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis.”
“This is a truly global crisis as no country is spared,” Gopinath wrote. “Countries reliant on tourism, travel, hospitality, and entertainment for their growth are experiencing particularly large disruptions.”
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