October 29, 2020 3:46PM 

# V‑Shaped Recovery 

By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) 

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis [released](https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/gross-domestic-product-third-quarter-2020-advance-estimate) estimates of third quarter gross domestic product (GDP) today. The headline is that GDP jumped 33.1 percent from the second quarter at an annualized rate.

That statistic is hard to appreciate, so I charted the underlying GDP data from BEA [Table 1.1.6](https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/index_nipa.cfm). The chart shows GDP in the BEA’s 2012 constant dollars.

You can see the sharp drop in the second quarter of 2020 and the sharp rise in the third quarter. It is a V‑shaped recovery so far. However, we’ve still got more climbing to get to the peak reached in the fourth quarter of 2019.

![s](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/2020-10/gdp%20q3.png?itok=DAzJHqUD) 

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