In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.
The economic impact of coronavirus continues to surprise. In the spring, previously unimaginable shutdowns pushed economic activity to unimaginable lows. After the initial shock, however, perhaps the biggest surprise has been how fears of systemic meltdown remain unfulfilled — the initial bounce back was far stronger and sooner than expected, and some sectors of the U.S. and other economies have seen complete recoveries to pre-crisis levels of activity.
While the stronger-than-expected recovery aligns with the business experience of many leaders we speak with, they still wonder what drove the gap between expectations and reality — and whether it can last. To answer these questions, we need to look at various recession types and their drivers, how Covid-19 fits in, and what this cycle’s idiosyncrasies are.
Fears Unfulfilled, Hopes Surpassed
As the coronavirus forced the economy into shutdown, a brutal economic contraction unfolded, breaking many (negative) records in the process. Yet, the sustained impact was broadly overestimated — both systemically and cyclically — as the intensity of the shock fueled widespread economic pessimism.
Systemic fears were captured in the popular prediction of a new Great Depression, which would bring sovereign defaults, banking system collapse, and price deflation. Yet after a wobble prices stabilized, sovereign borrowing costs broadly fell across the world despite expansive borrowing, and the banking systems has shown few signs of liquidity problems. (In fact, after hoarding capital banks are looking to return capital again.) The broader systemic fears remain unfulfilled and never looked as perilous as in 2008.
As systemic fears remained unfulfilled, cyclical fears also have proliferated. Unemployment — a cornerstone gauge of economic health — was expected to stay at high levels in the U.S. past the end of 2021. Analysts predicted waves of bankruptcies, a weakening housing market, and a potential collapse after an initial recovery in a “W”-shaped manner.
Yet, here too the surprises have been to the upside. While still unacceptably high, unemployment fell much sooner and faster than thought: By September U.S. unemployment was lower than it was expected to be by the end of 2021. Housing showed remarkable resilience — with prices barely dipping and activity and sales bouncing back to or near the highs since the housing crisis. Many parts of the U.S. economy have returned to pre-crisis levels of activity. Indeed, as the 3Q GDP release last Thursday highlighted, over the last three months growth has been the highest ever recorded. While this does not indicate that the U.S. economy has returned to health or to pre-crisis levels of activity, it is testament to an extraordinarily vigorous rebound after a historically negative second quarter.
These patterns are true around the world: Economic surprise indices, which show an amalgamation of the differences between realized and expected performance, have spiked to record highs everywhere — with the exception for China, where expectations for a full recovery were the baseline.
Why the Covid Recession Outperformed Expectations
While many business leaders have seen these dynamics unfold in real time, they seek to understand the drivers that explain it in order to better see the path ahead. Charting recoveries remains exceptionally difficult (if not as difficult as predicting recessions), but there is value in thinking about the types of recession, their drivers, and impact — as well as about the idiosyncrasies that will shape the remaining recovery path.
There are three dimensions of economic recessions which – when taken together – can help frame the dynamics of recovery. The Covid recession displays distinctive characteristics within this framework that help explain much of what has been on display:
Recession nature. This captures the underlying force — for example, an investment bust, a financial crisis, a policy error or an exogenous shock — that’s afflicting the economy. Despite its brutal intensity, the Covid shock is preferable to an investment bust or a financial crisis that were at the heart of the last two recessions (2001 and 2008/09) because it comes without an overhang of excess investment to work off, which is what delays the onset of recovery and weighs on its trajectory. Indeed, the biggest risk of an exogenous shock is that it morphs into a systemic crisis (traditionally, the fear would be a financial crisis).
Policy response. This decisively shapes the recovery path and is a clear silver lining of the Covid recession. The speed, feasibility, and effectiveness of fiscal policy has been demonstrated, above all in the U.S. There remains a common misperception that virus caseloads and Covid deaths are strict determinants of economic performance. In reality, the correlation is weak — precisely because a strong economic policy response effectively bridges some of the economic damage from less successful virus control efforts. Think of how U.S. efforts at virus control largely failed relative to other rich nations — in Europe, for example — yet U.S. real growth has still come out ahead. The much bolder U.S. policy effort explains that outcome. Yet, the ultimate impact of policy is to prevent a different type of contagion — household and firm bankruptcies and a wobbly banking system — and this is where structural damage comes in.
Structural damage. This is the key determinant of a recession’s shape. When a recession leads to a collapse in capital expenditures and pushes workers out of the labor force, an economy’s productive capacity declines. That’s what happened in the U.S. in 2008 as the financial crisis disrupted capital stock growth and made it much harder to return to pre-crisis levels. The Covid recession is more favorable in this respect as there is no “overhang” from the last expansion which did not see excesses in investment or lending that now has to be worked off. Additionally, the fast policy response — unlike in 2008 — contained bankruptcies and drove a strong V-shape recovery in capital goods orders. So far, the Covid recession looks likely to have avoided major structural damage.
It’s quite possible that we were prepared for the worst with the Covid recession because the late and sluggish recovery from the Great Recession is still on our minds. And using the drivers outlined above we can see why: It started as an investment bust that turned into a financial crisis, which in turn impaired financial sector balance sheets and household balance sheets. This was met with a policy response that was quite delayed and kicked in after significant damage was already done. If that serves as in an implicit baseline for how recoveries play out, then the better than expected Covid trajectory should not surprise us.
Can the Covid Recovery Continue to Surprise to the Upside?
To gauge the next leg of recovery we need to go beyond the above drivers – think of them as the necessary foundations for a continued strong recovery – and look at the idiosyncrasies of the Covid recession for sufficient conditions that show how the strength could be delivered.
Looking at the sectors of the U.S. economy more closely, we can divide it into three parts that were impacted very differently given the nature of the virus-driven recession. This suggests the “easy” phase of recovery is exhausted:
Sectors unaffected by Covid, such as housing and utility consumption, financial services, and off-premise food. Using a household budget as an analogy, you can think of these as “fixed costs” that cannot be reduced easily. This amounts to about 46% of U.S. consumption and never dipped.
Sectors affected by lockdowns, but not by social distancing, such as autos and other durable goods. These sectors took a big hit from physical lockdowns, but once those were lifted, they bounced back strongly, often fully — and sometimes even exceeding pre-crisis levels. These sectors represent about 16% of the U.S. consumption.
Sectors that are directly vaccine dependent, such as transportation, recreation, and food service. Some of these sectors bounced back after the lockdown, while others remain unable to meaningfully recover to pre-crisis activity levels because of the risk of exposure to the virus. These sectors represent about 38% of U.S. consumption.
The next leg of a strong recovery thus hinges on that third group of sectors as the recovery potential of the second group is largely exhausted (and the first never dipped). This really moves the question of vaccines front and center. A timeline for the creation of a safe, effective vaccine that provides immunity for a significant time and can be rolled out quickly is fraught with uncertainty. Currently crowdsourced forecasts project a reasonable expectation that a vaccine will become available and meaningfully distributed (i.e. to those most vulnerable and those most at risk of spreading the virus) around Q2 2021.
How It Could All Go Wrong From Here
Neither the necessary nor the sufficient conditions outlined above are guaranteed. A lot can go wrong, and indeed fears of another economic collapse are common in public discourse.
The truly bad scenario is often captured in warnings about a “W-shaped” recession, which would imply another phase of negative growth. In other words, after the collapse (Q2) and the very strong bounce (Q3) we would need Q4 (or Q1 2021) to be a second window of negative growth.
How likely is this scenario? It would almost certainly require a renewed surge of the virus and stringent lockdown that would hamper the second group of sectors. Hospital capacity will prove the ultimate constraint on policy makers’ balancing act between keeping economic activity high and the population safe. While another lockdown is possible, as we’re seeing in Europe, in the U.S. selective shutdowns are more likely given political dynamics, leaving room for growth to stay above zero.
And while positive growth remains our expectation for Q4 and 2021, a host of other risks lingers. A continued failure to extend fiscal stimulus measures could diminish the slope of recovery — or in the extreme turn it negative. A broader political failure — perhaps related to a contested election outcome — is also on the list of risks.
What It Means for Businesses
In times of crisis it’s tempting to be pessimistic and fearful, particular if the drivers are unfamiliar or the risks pose credible systemic threats. However, this inclination to pessimism and retreat also carries risks itself and we should remind ourselves that 14% of firms across all sectors typically grow both revenues and margins during downturns. This is not just idiosyncratic luck — i.e. being in the right sector and seeing a demand boost because of the nature of the crisis — it’s driven by a firm’s ability to see beyond the acute phase of a crisis and exploit its idiosyncrasies to drive differential growth in new areas. While monitoring the overall macro landscape remains important, leaders should not underestimate the importance of measuring, interpreting, and exploiting the dynamics of their own sectors and markets in order to be able to invest and flourish during the recovery and the post-crisis period.
If our content helps you to contend with coronavirus and other challenges, please consider subscribing to HBR. A subscription purchase is the best way to support the creation of these resources.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
