[ti:The Economy Shrinks with Shocking Speed] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:02.00]Three weeks ago, the car service company EmpireCLS [00:07.76]was heading toward its second straight year of a growing business. [00:13.72]Empire, based in New Jersey, could not find enough drivers and office workers to meet its needs. [00:23.12]Now, the company is on the edge of failure. [00:28.36]With extreme speed, business in the United States and around the world has collapsed in the face of the coronavirus. [00:38.88]People are told to stay home. [00:41.72]A car service like Empire is not needed. [00:47.12]The company has had a "90 percent revenue loss in three weeks," said company chief David Seelinger. [00:56.48]"We've been through 9/11. We've seen recessions. We've never seen anything like this.'' [01:04.68]Seelinger spent last Sunday telling 750 of his 900 employees they no longer had a job. [01:14.44]"It was the most difficult day of my career," he said. [01:19.12]Never before has the American economy come to such a sudden, violent stop. [01:26.40]The fall has shocked Americans who had enjoyed more than 10 years of a growing job market and economy. [01:35.84]Now, the economy is headed toward a deep recession. [01:41.32]Millions of people will likely lose jobs within a few months. [01:46.84]"The economy has never gone from healthy to disaster so quickly," said Jason Furman. [01:55.04]He was former President Barack Obama's top economic adviser [02:00.28]and is now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. [02:05.60]"What would take years in a financial crisis has happened in days in this health crisis,'' Furman said. [02:14.24]Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, the economy has risen for 11 years. [02:22.40]Yearly growth has been at about 2.3 percent since 2010. [02:29.00]Employers have added positions for workers for the last nine years. [02:34.48]Just two weeks ago, the government released a great employment report: A gain of 273,000 jobs in February. [02:45.80]The country was experiencing a 50-year low in the rate of unemployment: 3.5 percent. [02:53.84]People were buying goods, eating out and spending money in other ways, too. [03:00.68]Things were great. [03:02.00]But all that went away after just a few weeks of the spread of the new coronavirus in America. [03:10.12]The investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs says [03:15.48]it expects the economy to shrink at a 24 percent yearly rate between April to June. [03:24.24]Days earlier, the company had predicted a drop of just five percent during the same period. [03:30.72]The information services company IHS Markit predicts 7 million job losses from April to June. [03:39.72]It expects unemployment will rise to 8.8 percent in the final three months of 2020. [03:48.56]Some economists say it will go even higher. [03:52.16]As investors began to understand the seriousness of the crisis, they began to sell. [03:59.84]Since February 12, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 35 percent. [04:07.28]The market events have sharply reduced family wealth and consumer confidence. [04:13.96]"I'm not sure that anyone honestly has any sense of how this... resolves," said Daniel Feldman. [04:21.40]The former U.S. ambassador advises large international companies for a Washington, D.C.-based law firm. [04:30.88]Government officials are trying to help. [04:33.20]The central bank has cut its main interest rate to almost zero. [04:39.40]It is also trying to make certain that companies can use short-term credit so they can continue to pay employees. [04:48.84]Congress and the White House are preparing a large stimulus program that includes giving money to citizens. [04:57.40]Economists do not usually recognize a recession until long after it has begun. [05:04.52]Now, they can see it coming. [05:07.24]"Never...have I known the week a recession started," [05:11.36]said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the company Grant Thornton. [05:17.44]She says the downturn began in the first week of March as the economy all but stopped. [05:26.16]For now, some Americans are working from home and keeping their jobs. [05:31.72]Some of them may be saving money, which will help the economy later, [05:36.44]explained Scott Hoyt, an economist at Moody's Analytics. [05:42.56]Yet the future does not look promising. [05:45.12]About 60 percent of American workers--82 million people--are paid by the hour. [05:52.56]Most will not be paid if they cannot go to work. [05:57.56]I'm Jill Robbins. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM