Joe Biden will likely spend much of the next four years trying to make up lost economic ground.
Though the economy has recovered from a large portion of the damage caused this spring by the pandemic and shutdowns, the process is incomplete. Many economists expect the next stages to be difficult. The economy is showing signs of slowing after the initial post-shutdown bounce, and recent history points to grinding recoveries, not quick bouncebacks.
The pandemic is also driving structural shifts in some industries that could permanently change how Americans spend and how companies do business—meaning dislocations for workers as the economy adjusts.
“We have gotten half of a bounce,” said Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economics professor. “The rest of it is probably going to take another two years or longer.”
That challenge will shape Mr. Biden’s presidency. The president-elect has plans for aggressive new spending programs on clean energy and infrastructure, ambitions to raise taxes on high-income households and a desire to increase regulation of energy and other sectors. But he faces difficult debates with Republicans about what fiscal policy would be effective in the unfinished recovery.
