CBO Expects Economy to Contract 7% in Second Quarter

The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that the U.S. economy will shrink by 7 percent in second quarter of this year.

“If that happened, the decline in the annualized growth rate reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis would be about four times larger and would exceed 28 percent,” the CBO said. “Those declines could be much larger, however.”

The CBO described its latest reading of the economy as “very preliminary estimates, which are based on information about the economy that was available through this morning and which include the effects of an economic boost from recently enacted legislation.”

The CBO sees the unemployment rate exceeding 10 percent during the second quarter.