WorlPosted at: Mar 25 2021 6:37PM

Washington, Mar 25 (Sputnik) The third and final GDP reading for the United States improved slightly from 4.1 percent to 4.3 percent, but the shift did not change the overall economic decline of 3.5 percent for 2020, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.
“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the ‘third’ estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis,” the department said in a statement.
But real GDP decreased 3.5 percent in 2020, unchanged from the previous reading released on February 25, the statement said. In 2019, the US economy grew by 2.2 percent.
And while the revision to fourth quarter GDP was positive, it was still a sliver of the record expansion of 33.1 percent seen in the third quarter. The third quarter growth was extraordinarily large as the economy rebounded from a spate of lockdowns, social restrictions and job losses in the second quarter associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
The annual decline in GDP came after a year of momentous economic disruptions and job losses in the United States. The US economy lost more than 21 million jobs between March and April 2020, at the height of business lockdowns and social restrictions forced by the COVID-19. About 10 million of those jobs have not returned, data shows.
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