A bit more context on interpreting forecasts that state *annualized* rates of GDP loss (scary 30%+ drops)...

That would only become 30% *realized* loss of GDP (economic output) if our current experience were to repeat week after week, month after month, and quarter after quarter, for an ENTIRE year...

If you look at the latest @BEA_News data on value added by industry (for 2019), you can see that the industries most impacted (economically, in terms of stopped production) account for relatively small fractions of economic output, compared w/ their employment shares...

Arts, entertainment, recreation, accomodation and food services account for $898.5 billion of our $21.428 trillion (2019) economy --or 4.2%. This was the sector immediately shut down by the #coronavirus #StayAtHomeOrder (the sector on "frontline" of *economic* fallout).

The second wave of economic victims of the #StayAtHomeOrder seems to be the retail trade sector (think brick-and-mortar department and clothing stores and other retail shops deemed "nonessential"). The entirety of this sector accounts for another $1.2 trillion in economic output.

Adding retail trade to the leisure/hospitality contribution to value added gets us to $2.071 trillion-- or 9.7% of the economy.

I can go further and think that maybe some portion of manufacturing is halted by the #StayAtHomeOrder. Adding *all* of value added from manufacturing ($2.36 trillion), would bring the cumulative % of GDP to over 20 percent.

(But I don't think anything close to *all* of manufacturing value added has been shut down though.)

Point is, that even though these parts of our economy make up larger shares of the workforce than #GDP, and even though we could thus see #unemployment reach 20% at its worst (leisure/hospitality + retail trade jobs were 21.3% of peak # of jobs in Feb 2020 establishment survey),

I think there is a natural upper-limit on how bad this crisis can get in terms of GDP effects even over the current quarter--as long as we control the "economic bleed" ("spread"!) by keeping the unemployed able to pay their bills, avoiding cascading and multiplying effects.

Whoops -- here's the @BEA_News release I meant to link to: https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2020-04/gdpind419.pdf