This is a NY Times article and (David) feel free to move it to the Off-Topic category if you think it's more germane there.
"Nearly a year after the coronavirus outbreak, the full impact of the pandemic on the U.S. economy remains unclear. Some of the most obvious indicators are in conflict: As some companies report enormous profits, nearly 10 million more Americans are now unemployed compared with last February, and over one million filed new state and federal unemployment claims last week.
Are we still in the early stages of a long recession, or will the rollout of vaccines mean we’ll soon see the end of a short-term crisis? How much are people suffering now, and for how long will the effects of the past 10 months persist?
We asked economists and experts with a variety of backgrounds how they would measure the state of the economy now and what indicators they thought were often overlooked. Here are eight measures they suggested."
How the Economy is Actually Doing
Comments
“ Ms. Jones, the labor economist who focuses on racial disparities, called for Congress to act boldly: “The fact is that the risks of doing too little to help the economy are enormous,” she said, “while the risks of doing too much are tiny.”
These indicators also show that some people are already getting left behind in an uneven recovery as others feel few impacts, or even flourish. The pandemic crisis “has drawn a tremendously bright and vivid line between the affected and the not affected,” Mr. Gapen said. “If you’re in the pool of the affected, I think it’s been just an awful year.”