The Economy by Decade: The 2020s

The 2020s have already delivered one of the strangest economic decades in modern history. We unpack how the pandemic reshaped work, inflation, housing, consumer behavior, and even the way economists think about recessions. We debate whether the pandemic or AI will ultimately define the decade, revisit the policy decisions that still shape the economy today, and talk through why everything from used cars to mortgage rates suddenly felt upside down. Along the way, we explore why the economy has seemed surprisingly resilient despite nonstop shocks, disruptions, and uncertainty.

In this episode, we talk about:

* Whether the pandemic or AI will be remembered as the defining economic event of the 2020s

* Inflation, stimulus policies, tariffs, and the strange post-pandemic economy

* How housing, work-from-home, and consumer habits permanently changed

* Why the 2020s economy has felt unusually weird and unpredictable

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This Week’s Drinks 🍻

Jadrian cracked open a Hardywood Pils, leftover from an end-of-semester cookout with his TAs. He almost grabbed the PBR x Grillo’s Pickle Beer, but decided to save that adventure for a future episode. Matt went with a Hammerhead IPA from Big Oyster Brewery, a West Coast-style IPA brewed with six hop varietals for an intense citrus and grapefruit character with notes of pine.

Name That Stat 📊

We originally planned to talk about the economics of higher education, so Jadrian brought in a stat on the number of graduate programs in the U.S., which has grown by roughly 69% since the early 2000s. But once we decided to launch our “economics by the decade” series, Matt pivoted to one of the defining economic indicators of the 2020s: the inflation rate that peaked in June 2022 at its highest level since the early 1980s.

Show Notes