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Goldman Sachs economists on Friday forecast an unprecedented 24% decline in second quarter gross domestic product, following a 6% decline in the first quarter, based on the economy’s sudden and historic shutdown as the country responds to the coronavirus pandemic. The economists then expect a bounce back of 12% in the third quarter and 10% in the fourth quarter, but unemployment will surge to 9%. They also expect GDP to contract by 3.8% for the full year on an annual average basis, and 3.1% on a fourth quarter over fourth quarter basis.
Goldman sees unprecedented stop of economic activity, with Q2 GDP contracting 24%
This is very scary. Even scarier, is that they could still be underestimating the impacts. For example, if foreclosures start to surge. The company I work for, and have worked for over 15 years, has all of us working from home until at least April 3rd. I lead our DevOps group and am a Senior DevOps Engineer. I saw the layoffs during the Financial Crisis / Great Recession. This looks worse in many ways. It's like standing at the edge of an economic void. If we avoid another big financial crisis, the recovery will be much faster, but in the near term, this is literally Great Depression level economic contraction.
When we do get back in the office, I plan on personally talking to the CEO and telling him that in my opinion, if we have to do layoffs in a few months, it would be better to come to everyone and ask them to take a temporary pay cut than to lay people off in an economy that is in free fall.