The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a global recession, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley economists say, according to Bloomberg.
Now, economists are debating how long and severe the recession will be.
Morgan Stanley said it expects growth to fall to 0.9 percent this year. Goldman Sachs said it expects growth to fall to 1.25 percent. S&P Global projected growth from 1 percent to 1.5 percent.
The slump in the global economy will not be as painful as the 0.8 percent contraction of 2009, according to Bloomberg, but it will be worse than the downturns in the early 1990s and 2001.
Both Morgan Stanley and Golman Sach said they expect a rebound in the second half of this year.
To stave off a financial crisis in the U.S., the White House has proposed a stimulus package of up to $1 trillion to help soften the blow of a sudden recession on individuals and businesses triggered by COVID-19. This, coupled with shifts in Federal Reserve policy, may improve the outlook, but the hit to the economy and employment from the virus will be big,
"Under any scenario, if we get a good stimulus package, I still think it’s a big hit. It’s hard to gauge but my guess is we’ll be down 2 percent to 3 percent in Q1 and around the same in Q2, assuming we get a lot of fiscal stimulus," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNBC. "It's one of those things we won’t know for a year down the road."