By Arthur Dos Santos, Masai Gordon, and Adam Prince

Before COVID-19, few Americans thought twice about where their goods came from. However, when store shelves emptied and exports slowed, the fragility of the global trade system became impossible to ignore. We explore how COVID-19 affected U.S. imports and exports. Pre-pandemic, global trade was experiencing steady growth, shaped by decades of increasing globalization, technological advancements, and expanding international agreements. Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, global trade skyrocketed, with the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and major trade deals like NAFTA, which created a free trade zone across North America. The U.S. became increasingly involved in global supply chains. In the early 2010s, trade continued to grow, but new tensions arose. The U.S. saw rising trade deficits and growing concern over reliance on foreign production. Trade levels remained high, with the U.S. being one of the world’s top importers and exporters.  Continue reading →

By Arthur Dos Santos, Masai Gordon, and Adam Prince

Imagine millions of jobs vanishing almost overnight, leaving workers across the world in uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just disrupt daily life—it triggered one of the most dramatic shifts in unemployment rates in modern history. In early 2020, before the pandemic hit, the United States’ unemployment rate had fallen to 3.5%, the lowest it’s been in the past 50 years. However, there were underlying issues in an evolving job market, such as declining labor force participation driven by an aging population, which still persisted and increased the severity of the collapse caused by the pandemic. We explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected male and female unemployment rates to understand how unemployment rates respond to crises and which demographic is most vulnerable to these economic shocks. By studying these shifts, we are able to gain important insight into the labor market and its inequalities. Understanding differences in unemployment by gender reveals how economic shocks can amplify existing inequalities. By identifying who is most vulnerable, policymakers and economists can create improved support systems for these groups during future crises.  Continue reading →

By Arthur Dos Santos, Masai Gordon, and Adam Prince

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a rapid and severe economic downturn in the United States. The real GDP per capita, which was $58,490 in quarter 4 of 2019, dropped to $57,691 in quarter 1 of 2020, and once more to $52,387 in quarter 2 of the same year. This steep decrease in real GDP per capita was measured at a growth rate of -24.7%; ‘for comparison, the annualized growth rate from [quarter 4 in 2007] to [quarter 2 in 2009], a peak‐to‐trough known as the Great Recession, was just -3.7%,’ (Cachanosky et al. 2021). These findings speak to the severity of the ‘COVID recession’, which had a negative growth rate of nearly 7 times that of the Great Recession.  Continue reading →