The year 2020 was unusual, and nobody suspected a global pandemic. While COVID-19 spread throughout the United States, many business owners had to shut down for everyone’s safety. Nonetheless, COVID-19 produced one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. The current slowdown is different from the recessions that we have experienced in the past 100 years. 

As the financial crisis continues, I asked two students from CHS, “How well do you think the USA’s economy has been performing?” Daniel Espinosa, a senior from CHS, says, “I just knew it was doing worse than the Great Depression at some point.” Another senior from CHS, Jennifer Lopez, thinks the opposite: “The economy is doing well right now and better than Europe.” In months, COVID-19 caused the GDP to decline by 31.4%, and the unemployment rate rose from 3.5% to 14.7%. Locally, Charlottesville’s unemployment rate had initially spiked to 10.2% at the time of the pandemic’s start but now has decreased to 4.2%.

In 2007, the United States went through the Great Recession that lasted 18 months due to subprime mortgages, but the Great Recession never exceeded the 10% unemployment rate. In contrast, the unemployment rate was at almost 15% in April 2020.

Even though the United States economy had a downfall, they are starting to get back on track. The U.S. has performed far better than its peers during this awful year. According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. has not done that bad. The International Monetary Fund expects the U.S. economy to contract by 4.4 percent in 2020, versus 5.3% in Japan, 6% in Germany, 7.1% in Canada, and nearly 10% in the United Kingdom and France. 

As the United States continues to deal with COVID-19, the economy has since commenced recovering, and it is looking much better than it was in April. The economic strengthening will mean job employment rates, gross domestic product, and global income will start to rise. If the economy continues to rebound, then we can expect a positive turnaround in 2021.