Fewer Bankruptcies. More Startups. One Strange Recession.

As measured by employment and gross domestic product, the recession brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has been the deepest since the Great Depression. Going by Bloomberg’s Corporate Bankruptcy Index, though, it’s a standard-issue downturn, nowhere near as bad as the recession of just over a decade ago.

This index, which was heavily affected by a few gigantic bankruptcies in 2008 and 2009 (Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, General Motors, CIT Group), is definitely not the only way to measure bankruptcy activity. Edward Altman, an emeritus professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a prominent bankruptcy analyst, favors simply counting the number of bankruptcies with liabilities of more than $1 billion, of which he says there have been 50 so far this year, breaking 2009’s full-year record of 49.