The US economy rose significantly in the first quarter

(CNN) – The US Commerce Department reported Thursday that the US economy grew at an annual rate of 6.4% in the first three months of the year, after adjusting for seasonal changes.

This was slightly more than economists had expected, and a faster rate than the 4.3% recorded at the end of 2020.

In normal times, the 6.4% growth rate represents electricity growth. But during the pandemic, the situation has become very different. After the disastrous contraction during the first wave of the pandemic last spring, the United States is still on the road to recovery.

The explosive growth in GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity, is a good sign that the US economy is moving in the right direction, although growth has slowed from the massive annual increase of 33.4% in the second quarter of 2020 when the economy was in place. It began to re-open.

The government uses the “annual” average, which assumes that the quarterly growth rate will last for an entire year, because it makes it easy to compare numbers from different time periods.