Senior White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Sunday predicted an unemployment rate that skyrockets past 20%, and which could be in double digits on Election Day.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Hassett said the second quarter will also be bad for the Gross Domestic Product.
“It's going to be quite a bit higher,” he said of unemployment sparked by the economic shutdown because of the coronavirus. “And there were some technical things that kind of messed up, it could be an economics lecture if we go into them, but if they fix the things from last time, you'll end up with a number north of 20%.”
Hassett added, “Yes, I do,” when asked if he believed the figures could remain grim as American go to the voting polls.
“But I think that all the signs of economic recovery are going to be raging everywhere,” he added. “And the only thing we're going to really be debating as economists is are we going to get back to where we were or will it be a long haul to get there.”
Hassett predicts the 2nd Quarter GDP also should be sour.
“If you look a the Congressional Budget Office outlook for GDP which I think is about what should we expect, they've got about the worst ever quarter in the second quarter in U.S. history,” he said.
“You'll see the second quarter drop a lot and the third quarter skyrocket,” he added. “The question is when you skyrocket will you get back to where you started, and the CBO doesn't quite think so.”