Post-COVID economic recovery expected to be slow, CBO says

The Congressional Budget Office said in updated projections that the U.S. economy will contract at an annualized rate of almost 38 percent in the second quarter of this year, part of a precipitous fall in economic activity that has ended the longest expansion since World War II.

Almost 26 million fewer people will be employed in the second quarter, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, resulting in an unemployment rate of 15 percent and marking the “steepest deterioration in the labor market since the 1930s,” the agency said Tuesday.

While the CBO expects the second quarter to be the