Powell Hopes Future COVID Variants Will Have Less Economic Impact

Q: Could you elaborate on what you meant by less economic implications from each successive wave of Covid?

• A: In the summer wave of COVID last year, in largely southern and western states, the economy performed much better. We were coming off the spring wave where were a lot of shutdowns and many expected it would have an impact on the economy - and it was much less than people thought.
• Many people are vaccinated, they're going on with their lives., we've kind of learned to live with it. A lot of industries improvised their way around it. So that can all -- it seems like we've learned to handle this. I think people would like to get back to the way things were, and I hope to some extent we will over time.
• The big wave we had last winter did have significant employment effects, particularly in hospitality and leisure etc.
• With delta, we're going to have to watch. With a reasonably high percentage of the country vaccinated and the vaccine apparently being effective, a good estimate would be the effects will probably be less, probably won't be significant lockdowns.