COVID-19 could see U.S. population shrink faster

The long-term effects of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. are still anybody’s guess, but most economists and experts are predicting significant negative impacts on GDP, jobs growth and even population sizes. Data released by the Congressional Budget Office last week shows just how bad the U.S. government believes the outlook is for the future.

According to projections released by the Congressional Budget Office, the predicted population of the U.S. over the next two and a half decades is expected to be substantially impacted by COVID-19. The new 2020 number of a predicted 374 million people living in the U.S. by 2046 is a revision of the 2018 estimate of 384 million. A big factor in the new number is that economists expect birth rates in the country to decline, correlating with higher unemployment rates and an increase in anxiety within the country associated with the pandemic and economic consequences.

Total GDP and labor productivity are expected to decline as well. In 2018, the projected average annual growth in labor productivity was expected to grow by 1.5 percent between the years 2031 and 2050. Now, economists expect that growth number to fall to just 1.3 percent – a small numerical decrease that could amount to larger quality of life consequences in the U.S. Growth in GDP is also expected to fall, going from a 2018 projection of 1.9 percent average annual growth to 1.6 percent between the years 2031 and 2050.

According to the Wall Street Journal, these dips in projections are all expected to have a significant impact on the already astronomical national debt in the U.S. Economists don’t fully understand what an even faster growth of national debt will do to the country, but most are in agreement that it will accelerate over the next decade.