This is the steepest downturn the U.S. labor market has seen since the Great Depression.

The economic collapse from coronavirus has the ingredients to surpass the disaster of the 1930s https://trib.al/D3rqarY  https://twitter.com/business/status/1253301399137538050

Current forecasts are for the unemployment rate to reach 20% this month. Some predict it could go as high as 30% this year.

That would eclipse even the Great Depression in severity http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

The Great Depression hit the entire world, reducing economic output 15%. And it ground on mercilessly for years – by 1933, unemployment in the U.S. was at 25%

The crash was so severe that governments permanently expanded their role in the economy http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

President Ronald Reagan once quipped that “recession is when your neighbor loses his job; depression is when you lose yours.”

There will be few people whose economic livelihoods are not hurt by the coronavirus http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

Besides severity, another qualification for a depression is duration – the 1930s saw a decade of economic pain.

Many hope that our current economy will bounce back from the coronavirus in a so-called V-shaped recovery http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

But there are reasons to believe this downturn won't be over quickly.

Simply letting people out of their homes will not turn the economy back on. The main reason people are staying inside is not lockdowns but the threat of the virus itself http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

Effective coronavirus treatments probably won’t be available at least until the fall or later.

That means many more months of business devastation except in the few competent and lucky places that get test-and-trace systems in place http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

Then there’s the global nature of the downturn:

GDP is set to decline in almost every country.
Many countries will struggle to recover.

That will hurt both U.S. export markets and international investors for years to come http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

A depression also involves years of financial industry dysfunction and declines in lending.

The threat of repeated coronavirus outbreaks, along with continued business failures, may make banks just as afraid to lend as they were after 2008 http://trib.al/D3rqarY 

Let's hope this depression won’t last a decade, but an unprecedented slump followed by years of pain seems inevitable http://trib.al/D3rqarY