COVID-19: What Will Happen to the Economy?

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the employment marketplace has been a progression, much like the spread of the virus throughout the world population at large.

As such, it was only a matter of time before employers took steps to deal with the virus. This is especially the case in regards to face-to-face interviews. In order to shed some light on what employers have been doing, we posed a poll question to Top Echelon Network members.

That question was as follows:

What do you think will happen to the economy as a result of COVID-19?

The choice of answers that we provided is listed below, along with the percentage of split network recruiters that selected each one:

• There will be no recession; we’ll bounce back before that happens. — 9.0%
• There will be a short recession with a rapid recovery. — 43.6%
• There will be a garden variety recession. — 20.5%
• Get ready for the second Great Recession. — 19.2%
• Get ready for the second Great Depression. — 2.6%
• You can stick your poll question, I don’t want to think about it. — 5.1%

Summary:

Far and away, the most popular answer among Network members was “There will be a short recession with a rapid recovery.” That answer garnered nearly half of the responses (43.6%).

On the other hand, nearly the same number of recruiters believe that there “will be a garden variety recession” (20.5%) and that we should get “ready for the second Great Recession” (19.2%).

Predictably, the answers start to fall off from there. However, it should be noted that almost one-in-10 recruiters believes that there will be no recession and that we’ll bounce back before that happens.

Analysis and Conclusion:

The funny thing about the COVID-19 pandemic is that opinions about it change on an almost daily basis. In other words, this answers to this poll question are between one and two weeks old. As a result, if we asked Network recruiters the exact same question today, their answers may very well be different.

How would they be different? Well, if one had to venture a guess, I would say there would be more people predicting a garden variety recession as opposed to a short recession with a rapid recovery. But that’s just my guess. I’m certainly not a soothsayer.

Perhaps we’ll revisit the answers to this poll question later this year. Then we’ll be better able to assess the Network’s prognostication prowess as a whole.

If you have questions about your Top Echelon recruiting network membership, please contact Director of Network Operations Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS.

You can do so by calling 330.455.1433, x156 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.