In the past few months, the coronavirus has dealt devastating blows to the U.S. economy, which, according to experts, will take years to recover from. This is why the economic recovery for the US is more important than ever. The decreasing number of cases per day is allowing the US to begin their recovery, and they don’t have to focus on preventing the spread of covid-19 as much as they had been. 

The coronavirus, which has infected over 30 million people, has not only had an effect on the people with the virus. Since February of 2020, the economy has been going downhill, and on March 10th, 2020, the US stock market saw the greatest decline in a single day. This decline has not been matched since the recession of 2008, and ever since, the US has been slowly recovering from this setback. The United States has had to invest over 2 trillion dollars to try to counter the effects of the virus, and the problem still isn’t completely solved. 

Although the economy has been steadily growing for the past few months, it is still important to see how we would be able to speed up this process. Experts have estimated that the challenges the coronavirus has presented will take over 5 years to fully recover, and we are still a long way from things going back to normal. 

Our first goals should be to end the coronavirus, as the virus is the main reason why businesses and jobs are being lost. The end of quarantine and the end of social distancing will be able to help boost the economy, which will hopefully reset some of the effects of the virus. The United States government has been helping people with unemployment, giving over 20 billion dollars to individuals. 

Some things that could be done to help the economy are supporting small or local businesses. In Pennsylvania, for example, they have the “Five4Fifty” campaign, which encourages people to spend 5 dollars a day for 50 days at small businesses. It would be able to stimulate the local economy, and would help communities recover from the virus faster. People also have to adapt to their employment changing, with some possible solutions being microlending, or a change of profession. In California, the state has set aside 50 million dollars for smaller companies that are in need of loans, with Chicago following this example. Not only is microlending helpful, but in New Jersey, they created a “job portal” that would be able to connect people in need of jobs with employment opportunities. These concepts would be able to improve the economy much more than just giving people checks, as it provides them longer-term solutions, rather than temporary ones. 

Individuals are also able to make a difference and impact the economy, by doing simple things such as shopping at small businesses more often. Experts are also recommending people to put aside around 10 percent of their money as savings in case of large incidents like this one. They also want to make sure that the priorities of the people are each other, and not necessarily only worrying about the money. They have to be able to end this pandemic before a full recovery is possible, and the only way is to help prevent the spread of the virus. People can help, whether by staying home or just wearing a mask in public.