(Headline USA) The U.S. economy grew at a sizzling 33.1% annual rate in the July-September quarter — by far the largest quarterly gain on record — rebounding from an epic plunge in the spring, when the eruption of the coronavirus closed businesses and threw tens of millions out of work.
The Commerce Department’s estimate Thursday of third-quarter growth regained only about two-thirds of the output that was lost early this year when the economy essentially froze, but the good news released Thursday far exceeded expectations.
“Trump’s policies have given America a super-V shaped recovery that no economists at the Fed, the CBO, or on Wall Street believed was possible three months ago,” said economist Stephen Moore, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. “The estimates were 15% growth, instead we got twice that growth. This proves that Trump’s policies of relying on deregulation and tax cuts have worked spectacularly. America also has much higher growth than Europe and virtually all of our major trading partners.”
The estimate of GDP growth is the last major economic report before Election Day, after a campaign that President Donald Trump has sought to build around his economic record before the pandemic hit.
Trump has drawn generally solid public support for his handling of the economy.
The unemployment rate, at 7.9%, is down significantly from 14.7% at the start of the pandemic recession.
The economy is still roughly 10.7 million jobs short of recovering all the 22 million jobs that were lost to the pandemic.
The government’s estimate of the third-quarter jump in the gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services in the United States — was the biggest such increase on records dating to 1947, surpassing a 16.7% surge in 1950 during the Truman administration.
In the January-March quarter this year, GDP had contracted at a 5% annual rate before a record-setting 31.4% annual tumble in the spring.
“This is remarkable news that shows the American economy is coming back strong, even surpassing expectations…,” said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks. “We must continue to reopen and get the government out of the way so consumers, workers, and businesses can continue to recover. We need leaders who will commit to working to reopen the American economy, not entertain ideas of future widespread shutdowns.”
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
