U.S. Economic Activity During the Early Weeks of the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak

Daniel Lewis; Karel Mertens; James H. Stock

doi:10.3386/w26954

U.S. Economic Activity During the Early Weeks of the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak

Daniel Lewis, Karel Mertens & James H. Stock

Working Paper 26954

DOI 10.3386/w26954

Issue Date April 2020

This paper describes a weekly economic index (WEI) developed to track the rapid economic developments associated with the response to the novel Coronavirus in the United States. The WEI shows a strong and sudden decline in economic activity starting in the week ending March 21, 2020. In the most recent week ending March 28, the WEI indicates economic activity has fallen further to -6.19% scaled to 4 quarter growth in GDP.

Bi-weekly updates of the Weekly Economic Index are available at https://www.jimstock.org/. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. We are grateful to Mihir Trivedi and Eric Qian for research assistance, to Tyler Atkinson for useful suggestions, and to Mark Booth for sharing the tax collections data.
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U.S. Economic Activity During the Early Weeks of the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak

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