
Many jobs may vanish forever as layoffs mount - hhs
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/economy/coronavirus-unemployment-claims.html
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rayiner
> “Firms intend to hire these people back,” he said, referring to a recent
> survey of businesses by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. “But we know
> from the past that these aspirations often don’t turn out to be true.”

What past scenarios can we base these conclusions on? Nothing like this has
ever happened in the modern economy. In the past when we’ve had this kind of
job loss, there was significant capital destruction, e.g. bankruptcies of
farms and loss of production from the dust bowl, or fundamental devaluation of
assets, e.g. property being worth less than previously thought. Here, at least
for the moment, GDP is down simply because people have stopped working. It’s
not clear the productive capacity of the economy has decreased.

Honestly, I have no idea what will happen. But I think it’s probably not
correct to try and compare this to previous recessions.

