Statistics that will capture the economic damage
from the virus and the efforts to contain it are
just beginning to surface. For now, Brooks
fears “all the things we don’t see: The social
distancing, the quarantining and the uncertainty
aren’t in the hard data yet.”
The early evidence is sobering: The Federal
Reserve Bank of New York reported Monday
that manufacturing activity in New York state
plunged this month to the lowest level since the
Great Recession year of 2009.
On Tuesday, hotel executives, whose bookings
have swiftly dried up, took their worries to the
White House.
“I personally lived through many crises,
starting with the S&L, the 9/11 crisis, the Great
Recession,” said Hilton’s CEO, Christopher
Nassetta. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years. Never
seen anything like it.”
Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American
Hotel & Lodging Association, noted that hotels
last year were, on average, roughly 67% full.
Now?
“We’re probably under 20% nationwide and
headed south,” he said. “If, by the end of the year,
we get up to 35% and nothing else happens,
that will be about 4 million jobs lost.”
The speed with which the virus broke out
of China and traversed the globe caught
forecasters off guard. Federal Reserve Chair
Jerome Powell said Sunday that the Fed
won’t even bother to issue its usual quarterly
economic forecasts this week.
Its economic view, after all, depends on
how the virus outbreak evolves, “and that’s