The Economic Data Is About to Get Weird

Neil Irwin: “The United States is experiencing an unfathomable collapse in its economic activity. That much we know. But more so than in even in a normal recession, the tools we have to understand what is happening to the economy are becoming distorted or harder to interpret, for a wide range of reasons.”

“Major economic indicators like the jobless rate rely on surveys of people and businesses, but the Covid-19 crisis is already affecting how many people and businesses respond to them. This could distort results. Bottlenecks in state employment systems are artificially holding down the number of people who can file for unemployment benefits. And for vast numbers of people, it is not obvious how their employment status should be classified.”