Coronavirus likely to cripple U.S. economy’s retail sales

Since a few months finance analysts have been predicting that the world might go in to a deep recession of the century due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The governments across the globe are taking measures like complete lockdowns across many of the cities which have severely affected many businesses across many sectors. There are high chances that the retail sales in the U.S. would be affected with a record drop in sales as the businesses have been mandatorily shut down to control the spread of coronavirus. A decrease of some of the goods has been observed and the consumer spending has also been affected to its worst.

The Commerce Department on April 15, 2020 has revealed that about millions of Americans are today out of work and the economists have said that the economy is in a deep recession. The local as well as state governments have ordered to stay-at-home or shelter-in-place which has affected about 90 percent of the Americans. Since the virus can be easily transmitted from one person to another who is in close proximity, people have been ordered to stay at home to stop the spread.

Some of the economists have said that the bottom or the peak of the economy would be seen when the infection numbers stabilize and that things are expected to be really bad financially. Figures by a survey has revealed that the retail sales has gone down by 8.0 percent in March, 2020 which is already a warning sign of a decline. In March, the retail sales that was severely affected was the car industry where the light vehicle sales came down crashing in March, 2020.

Even the restaurants and bars would face a steep decline but still many of them have shifted to online orders and home deliveries but still the economists say that the figures are still insufficient. Social distancing measures are going to make it tough for the businesses to survive.

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