The US economy shrank by a record 19.2 per cent between the peak in the fourth quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, confirming that the recession caused by the COVID-19 epidemic was the worst in history, government data showed on Thursday.

The pace of recovery from the epidemic downturn is equally alarming. The US economy rebounded at an average historical rate of 18.3 per cent between the second and fourth quarters of 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the US Department of Commerce.

In March last year, in an effort to slow the first wave of novel coronavirus infection, the US forced the closure of non-essential businesses to put the economy in trouble and led to a record 22.362 million job losses. The US government provided nearly $6 trillion in epidemic relief, and the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate to near zero and injected money into the economy by buying bonds every month.

The National Bureau of Economic Research announced last week that the US economy fell into a two-month recession from February to April 2020, the shortest recession in the country's history, but had a huge impact on all sectors.

Large-scale fiscal stimulus, the Fed's ultra-loose monetary policy and COVID-19 vaccination have restored economic activity, and GDP in the United States in the second quarter was higher than the level before the epidemic. The US government also said the economy shrank by 3.4 per cent in 2020, rather than the 3.5 per cent previously estimated, but it was still the biggest drop in GDP since 1946.

Although economic growth is likely to peak in the second quarter, economists still expect US GDP to grow by about 7 per cent this year, the strongest performance since 1984.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday raised its forecast for US economic growth this year and next to 7.0 per cent and 4.9 per cent, up 0.6 and 1.4 percentage points respectively from its April forecast.