As an economist, I’m often asked during recessions to divine the path of the recovery that will follow. In the current Covid-19 downturn, I find myself of two minds on this question. I thought I would share them both.

THE PESSIMIST IN ME Economic downturns are often highly persistent. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of turning points in the business cycle in the United States, has not yet declared that the country is in a recession, but it surely is. Like others, this recession may leave scars on the economy for years to come.

THE OPTIMIST IN ME Yes, the economy is often slow to recover from downturns, including the Great Recession of 2008-9. But this recession is different. It is occurring not by accident but by design. Employment and production are falling because we want people to stay at home.

PESSIMIST It sure is different. Look at the most recent jobs report. The employment-population ratio fell by 1.1 percentage points, the largest one-month drop since the data began in 1948. And that record will be broken next month, when the economic carnage of the last few weeks appears in the data. This downturn will be the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.