It's still not clear yet if the next U.S. president will be incumbent Donald Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden, but whoever triumphs will face monumental challenges on the economic front. The recession has been ugly. It has wiped away more than a year of economic output and more than five years of jobs growth. The workforce is now smaller than it was a year before Trump first took office. One bright spot - consumer spending - is stronger than it was right after the pandemic exploded in March, but still only back to where it was last June. Housing prices are on the rise, which is a great thing for U.S. homeowners but at the same time is worsening the affordability crisis for aspiring home buyers renters. Manufacturing activity - a key concern in the Midwestern battleground states - has rebounded, but manufacturing employment is in worse shape than employment overall. And the coronavirus is still surging across most of the United States. Nearly 6,000 people died last week, and there's growing concern that the U.S. might need to reinstate lockdowns that happened across Europe in order to get it under control.