US GDP Contracts by 4.8 Percent in First Quarter

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The US economy shrank by a record 4.8 percent in the first three months of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses across the country, its sharpest decline since the Great Recession, the Department of Commerce said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 4.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, according to the 'advance' estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis,” the statement said.

The statement comes several days after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued its preliminary projection saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a substantive blow to the US economy with the inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (real GDP) expected to shrink by about 12 percent during the second quarter, which is "equivalent to a decline at an annual rate of 40 percent."

At the same time, a number of American states have begun to reopen in a bid to revive the economy, regardless of the spike in confirmed coronavirus cases across the country.

The first businesses have started working again in Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Alaska while 15 states are scheduled to lift stay-at-home orders by the end of April or in early May, according to The New York Times.