Madagascar Development

The Congressional Budget Office released its own bleak outlook Tuesday on economic growth, unemployment and the federal budget, predicting job gains later this year but an overall climate that will remain subdued through 2021. In its latest projections, the CBO sees GDP capsizing 38% on an annualized basis in the second quarter with the 26 million more unemployed Americans than there were at the end of 2019. The forecasts are roughly in line with Wall Street economists and slightly less dour than the most recent tracking number from the Atlanta Federal Reserve, which sees GDP falling about 42% in the April-to-June period. If the collective outlook is anything close to accurate, it will represent the worst drop for a U.S. economy that was brought to a halt due to efforts to stem the coronavirus pandemic. "The economy is expected to begin recovering during the second half of 2020 as concerns about the pandemic diminish and as state and local governments ease restrictions,...

he COVID-19 pandemic’s continued impact on the labor market was highlighted Thursday morning when the U.S. Labor Department released its weekly initial jobless claims report. Another 2.981 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 9 surpassing economists’ estimates for 2.5 million jobless claims for the week.  The prior week’s figure was revised higher to 3.18 million  from the previously reported 3.17 million jobless claims. Over the past two months, more than 36 million Americans have filed unemployment insurance claims. (Yahoo Finance/David Foster) More Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims data by one week, totaled a record 22.83 million in the week ending May 2 following 22.38 million continuing claims in the prior week. The weekly number of jobless claims has been steadily declining even as the cumulative number remains high. “Although initial jobless claims were still as high as 2,981,000 in the week ending 9t...