This video says the economic downturn started in February, a month before the virus

[Quixote1818]

30 second mark

[LizBeth]

1. Yes it did. I remember and covid saved him having to ever own that one.

[soothsayer]

2. Yep it's been reported

[Warpy]

3. I'd put it to January

which is when I saw a lot of retail going out of business because they'd failed to make sufficient money during the Xmas shopping season to stay open for the rest of the year. I mentioned at the time that strip malls were looking like meth mouth with all the empty spaces where stores used to be. It didn't matter if they were chain stores or indie, there was an epidemic of disappearing retail. January's growth number was revised downward after being initially touted as proof of stable genius; February was "disappointing." March fell off a cliff.

[unblock]

4. No, that's playing games with monthly chunking. Nber said February was the peak month.

Meaning the February marked an expansion of the economy from January and March was a contraction of the economy from February.

Because they time recessions from peak to trough and expansions from trough to peak, February is the end of the expansion and the beginning of the recession.

However, it's quite likely that the reason February was the peak is because March was utterly horrible.

Yes, it's possible that if one were to do a weekly analysis, one might find that the last week of February was a mild decline, enough to be negative but not enough to make February overall a contraction relative to January.

But nber doesn't get into that level of detail as far as I know. From what I can tell, nber never suggested that there was any economic contraction prior to the onset of the COVID-19-related shutdowns.

[MoonlitKnight]

5. The shutdowns started end of March

Trumps Tarriffs were already killing the economy.

March 28 was the big furlough day.