The US economy in the summer recovered much of the historically enormous ground it lost in the spring, expanding at the fastest rate on record in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Still, the recovery remains incomplete. The economic crisis that Covid-19 brought on is far from over, and the pandemic threatens to plunge the American economy into turmoil again as infection numbers continue to rise rapidly across the country.

The third quarter, however, was one for the record books. Gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of economic activity -- grew at an annualized and seasonally adjusted rate of 33.1% between July and September. This was a faster rate of expansion than economists had predicted.

It was the fastest growth rate since the government began to track quarterly GDP data in 1947. It represented a sharp, albeit partial, recovery from the prior three months, when the economy contracted at an annualized, seasonally adjusted rate of 31.4%.

The government reports GDP as an annualized rate, which assumes that the growth rate from one quarter to another will continue for a full year. This practice makes it easier to compare data over time.

But with the unprecedented economic woes of the pandemic, some economists suggest actual GDP growth is the better metric to tell the story of America's economy.
Looking at the quarterly data alone, GDP grew 7.4% from the second to the third quarter, compared with a 9% decline between the first and second quarter.

The rapid growth reflects the restarting of the economy after the spring lockdown, but America is not out of the woods yet. Even though the third quarter's annualized growth rate was a larger number than the decline in the second quarter, it doesn't mean the economy has fully bounced back.