US in recession as economy shrinks at 4.8% rate in first quarter

The record-long US economic expansion is over.

Gross domestic product contracted at a 4.8% annualized rate in the January-March period, the largest drop since 2008, according to Commerce Department data released Wednesday. The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists had called for a 4% drop.

The report is the first to show the wide-scale hit to U.S. output from Covid-19, which shut down business around the globe as governments sought to prevent the deadly, contagious disease from spreading.

With estimates for a second-quarter contraction that would be a record in data going back to the 1940s, the first-quarter figures effectively confirm that a recession has begun, ending the expansion that began in mid-2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.