US officially fell into recession in February amid coronavirus pandemic, economic bureau says

Sputnik news agency and radio 00:42 GMT 09.06.2020

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The National Bureau of Economic Research said in a report that the United States officially fell into a recession in February when the country began to feel the effects of the measures imposed to fight the novel coronavirus outbreak.

"The Business Cycle Dating Committee has determined that a peak in monthly economic activity occurred in the US economy in February 2020", the report said on Monday. "The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in June 2009 and the beginning of a recession".

The Bureau said the economic growth in the United States lasted 128 months, which is the longest in the history of US business cycles dating back to 1854.

Earlier on Monday, the World Bank said in a report that the global economy is expected to contract by 5.2 percent this year for the deepest recession since World War II due to the shutdown measures that followed the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

The US economy alone is expected to contract by 6.1 percent in 2020, 7.9 percentage points below previous forecasts, the report added.

As of 8 June, the country has registered nearly 2,000,000 coronavirus cases and more than 110,000 fatalities related to the disease, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention data shows.