those dates, with the U.S. recovery becoming the second longest on record in April 2018. Debt held by the public, a measure of national debt, has risen throughout the 21st century. Rising from 31% in 2000 to 52% in 2009, and reaching 77% of GDP in 2017, the U.S. ranked 43rd highest in debt out of 207 countries. Income inequality peaked in 2007 and fell during the Great Recession, yet still ranked 41st highest among 156 countries in 2017 (i.e., 74% of countries had a more equal income distribution). COVID-19 pandemic In the first two quarters of 2020 amid Donald Trump's presidency, the U.S. economy suffered major setbacks beginning in March 2020, due to the novel coronavirus and having to "shut-down" major sectors of the American economy. As of March 2020, US exports of automobiles and industrial machines had plummeted as a result of the worldwide pandemic. Social distancing measures which took effect in March 2020, and which negatively impacted the demand for goods and services, resulted in the US GDP declining at a 4.8% annualized rate in the first quarter, the steepest pace of contraction in output since the fourth quarter of 2008. US retails sales dropped a record 8.7% in March alone. The US airline industry had also been hit hard, seeing a sharp decline in its revenues. The COVID-19 recession has been widely described as the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression and "far worse" than the Great Recession. In May 2020, CNN gave an analysis based on unemployment data that the US economy was perhaps the worst that it had been since the 1930s. By May 8, the US had reached a record 14.7 percent unemployment, with 20.5 million jobs lost in April. The Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, warned that it may take "an extended time" before the US economy fully recovers from weak economic growth, due to the pandemic, and that in the foreseeable future the US can expect "low productivity growth and stagnant incomes". By 31 May 2020, more than forty million Americans had filed for unemployment benefits. By June 2020, the slump in US continental flights due to the coronavirus pandemic had resulted in the US government temporarily halting service of fifteen US airlines to 75 domestic airports. The New York Times reported on June 10, 2020, that "the United States budget deficit grew to a