This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 31st, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

It was, quite simply, the worst quarter for GDP the U.S. is seen in the modern era.

Between coronavirus and the distancing and

lockdowns and layoffs, it inspired GDP fell by about 10%. Jeremy

Horpendahl is a professor of economics at the University of Central Arkansas, he walks us through the numbers and what they might mean for the relative speed of an economic recovery.

The U.S. economy in terms of GDP,

GDP fell 9.5%.

Can you give us a sense of the magnitude of that decline?

Yeah, 9.5% in one quarter is huge.

If we look at that comparing to the Great Recession, which happened a little

over a decade ago, that's more than the total decline for all the Great Recession,

which is a little bit over 8%. So we're getting that all in just one quarter.

So you can think of almost a tenth of economic activity

being wiped out in one fell swoop. That's how we can contextualize that

number. That number is smaller than what you might see in some of the headlines which say

33% decline that's that would be if we kept having quarters like this for the next three quarters

then the economy would shrink by that amount but but that's so that's a number that is

often reported but not really useful right now.

Okay so in terms often reported but not really useful right now.

Okay, so in terms of employment, obviously employment is dramatically down and it continues,

the U.S. economy continues to shed jobs. What can we say about the relationship between those jobs that

have been shed and this massive decline in GDP.

...