美国国家公共电台 NPR 美国国家经济研究局发声明 美国经济于今年2月起陷入衰退（在线收听）

It's official. The United States is in a recession. That might seem like an obvious statement. After all, unemployment last month topped 13% as economic activity slowed to a crawl across the country. But for people who keep track of such things, it's not officially a recession until the scorekeepers at the National Bureau of Economic Research say so, which today they did.

这是官方声明。美国已经陷入经济衰退。这似乎是个显而易见的说法。毕竟，上个月的失业率高达13%，而且全美经济活动都在放缓。但对关注这些事情的人来说，在美国国家经济研究局的记录员表态之前，美国并不算正式进入经济衰退，而他们今天就明确表态了。

NPR's Scott Horsley joins us to talk about this. Hi, Scott.

NPR新闻的斯科特·霍斯利将和我们连线，就此进行详细报道。你好，斯科特。

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

斯科特·霍斯利连线：你好，阿里。

SHAPIRO: Start with the definition. What does it actually mean to say the economy is in a recession?

夏皮罗：先从定义开始。经济进入衰退到底意味着什么？

HORSLEY: Well, it means we're in a sustained period of economic contraction. As a practical matter, the announcement doesn't mean a whole lot. It doesn't trigger government action or anything like that. This does mean that when you go to print the charts in the newspaper, they'll know where to put the shaded area.

霍斯利：这意味着我们处于持续的经济萎缩期。实际来看，这份声明并不意味着什么。这不会触发政府行动或类似的举措。但这意味着你在报纸上打印图表时，他们会知道把阴影区放在哪里。

SHAPIRO: Right.

夏皮罗：好。

HORSLEY: But let's face it — this was not exactly a close call. I mean, this is a recession you could spot from outer space. We lost 22 million jobs in March and April. Just about every industry saw a spike in unemployment. And GDP, which shrank a little bit in the first quarter, is expected to fall off a cliff in the current quarter.

霍斯利：但我们要面对事实，准确来说这并不是危险情况。这是可以从外太空发现的经济衰退。我们在3月和4月损失了2200万个工作岗位。几乎每个行业都出现了失业率飙升的情况。而在第一季度只略有萎缩的GDP（国内生产总值），预计将在本季度出现跳崖式下跌。

SHAPIRO: In that case, what took so long to call this a recession?

夏皮罗：在这种情况下，为何经过如此长的时间才宣布进入衰退？

HORSLEY: Well, actually, by the standards of the National Bureau of Economic Research, this was a pretty fast call. It usually takes the team about nine months to a year to decide we're in a recession. In this case, they made the announcement in just about three months. You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know we're in a deep downturn. But what the committee's really trying to do is figure out when the recession started. Now, in a normal recession, that can be kind of hard to pinpoint because often the trouble starts small in one little corner of the economy and then ripples out. This, of course, is not a normal recession. It hit everywhere within a matter of weeks when we deliberately locked down the economy in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

霍斯利：事实上，按照国家经济研究局的标准，这可以说是相当快速的决定。团队通常需要大约九个月到一年的时间来决定我们是否陷入衰退。在这种情况下，他们只用了三个月左右就宣布了决定。不需要经济学博士就可以知道我们正处于严重的经济衰退之中。但委员会真正想做的是确定衰退是何时开始的。但就典型的衰退来说，这可能难以确定，因为问题通常从经济的一个小角落开始，然后涉及到其他地方。当然，现在并不是典型的衰退。当我们有计划地封锁经济以试图减缓冠状病毒的传播时，这场衰退在几周内便席卷了每个角落。

Now, the committee says the U.S. economy stopped growing in February, after an economic expansion that had lasted more than a decade. That was by far the longest expansion in history, dating back to the 1850s. And it ended not with a whimper but with a coronavirus bang. And we've been in a pandemic-driven recession ever since.

现在，该委员会表示，美国经济在经历了持续10多年的经济扩张之后，于2月份停止了增长。这是历史上时间最长的一次经济扩张，可追溯至19世纪50年代。而这场扩张并不是悄然结束的，而是因冠状病毒疫情而结束的。我们则一直处于由大流行引发的经济衰退之中。

SHAPIRO: But the unemployment numbers for May were actually pretty good. The economy added jobs. So when will we know if we're out of a recession?

夏皮罗：但实际上5月份的失业率数据相当不错。经济增加了工作岗位。那我们何时能知道我们是否摆脱了经济衰退？

HORSLEY: Yeah. That sometimes takes a little bit of — a while, too. But in the announcement today, the committee did point to the possibility that as deep as this is, the recession could prove to be fairly short. You mentioned that pleasant surprise we got from the Labor Department on Friday that we'd actually added jobs last month — a fraction of the jobs that went away in the two previous months but still a step in the right direction. A lot of forecasters also expect to see GDP start to grow again this summer after a very sharp contraction during the spring.

霍斯利：好。有时这也需要一点时间。但在今天的声明中，该委员会确实指出了一种可能性，即尽管衰退严重，但这可能证明衰退的持续时间会相当短。你刚提到了周五我们从劳工部报告中得到的意外惊喜，上个月的就业岗位有所增加，虽然增加量只是我们在前两个月损失的一小部分，但这仍是朝着正确方向迈出的一步。许多预测人士还预计，在经历了春季的大幅萎缩之后，GDP将在今年夏季恢复增长。

So if that happens, it's entirely possible the scorekeepers will look back and say this recession that started in February ended in maybe June or July. But keep in mind the end of the recession does not mean everything's back to normal or the people are feeling good again. It just means we've hit bottom and things are not getting any worse. If you look back a decade, the Great Recession officially ended in June of 2009, but it took a long time after that to dig out of the hole. And it was many years before a lot of folks felt like they were actually enjoying the recovery.

如果这能实现，那完全有可能的情况是，记录员会回顾并说，这场从2月份开始的衰退可能会在6月或7月结束。但请记住，经济衰退结束并不意味着一切恢复正常，也不意味着人们会再次感觉良好。这只意味着我们已经触底，事态不会变得更糟。如果你回首十年前，大衰退在2009年6月正式结束，但我们在很长时间之后才摆脱困境。很多年后，人们才感觉他们开始享受复苏。

SHAPIRO: And just briefly — what about a depression? Is there a committee that decides when the economy is in a depression?

夏皮罗：请简单回答一下这个问题，萧条呢？有没有委员会决定经济何时陷入萧条？

HORSLEY: No. But if in fact this ends quickly, it should not be another Great Depression. It's already deeper than the Great Recession, so we are going have to put our heads together and maybe come up with a better name for this situation we find ourselves in.

霍斯利：没有。但如果这会很快结束，那应该不会演变为另一场大萧条。现在的情况已经比大衰退时期更加严重，所以我们要集思广益，也许可以为我们目前所处的境况想出一个更好的名称。

SHAPIRO: NPR's Scott Horsley, who just gave himself his next assignment.

夏皮罗：以上是NPR新闻的斯科特·霍斯利带来的报道，他刚刚给自已布置了下一个任务。

Thanks a lot.

非常谢谢你。

HORSLEY: (Laughter) Thanks, Ari.

霍斯利：（笑）谢谢，阿里。