Thursday's GDP numbers set a record for the biggest plunge in activity ever recorded, falling almost 33 percent in the second quarter.
By comparison, the worst quarter during the 2008 financial crisis was an 8.4 percent drop in the fourth quarter.
Despite the dismal milestone, the figure was better than some analysts had predicted, noted Tyler Goodspeed, acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
"Certainly in today's data we did see what we've been suspecting for months now, which is that in the second quarter of 2020, the United States and indeed global economies experienced the largest adverse macroeconomic shock in decades," Goodspeed told Cheddar.
Also announced Thursday, 1.43 million unemployment claims were filed last week, up from 1.42 million the week before. More than 54 million Americans have filed in the past 18 weeks.
Continuing claims saw an increase as well. There were 17 million continued claims for this week, up from 16 million last week. However, the number is significantly lower than the record high of 25 million in early May.
While the numbers are extreme, Goodspeed said the federal government was quick to react to the coronavirus-driven shutdowns, never before seen at such a scale.
"We've also seen in this data that this shock was of unprecedented scale and speed, but also that the response of the United States federal government was unprecedented in its scale and speed."
Goodspeed noted disposable personal income saw an increase of $1.5 trillion and the savings rate in the second quarter went up about 45 percent.
"That does certainly bode well for consumer spending moving forward, as consumer spending accounts for approximately 70 percent of the U.S. economy," he said.
Markets were mixed Thursday afternoon after the morning announcement.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
