The Covid-19 recession is in the books as one of the deepest — but also the shortest — in U.S. history, the official documenter of economic cycles said Monday.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the contraction lasted just two months, from February 2020 to the following April.

Though the drop featured a staggering 31.4% GDP plunge in the second quarter of the pandemic-scarred year, it also saw a massive snapback the following period, with previously unheard of policy stimulus boosting output by 33.4%.

“In determining that a trough occurred in April 2020, the committee did not conclude that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity,” the NBER said in a news release. “The committee decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession associated with the February 2020 peak. The basis for this decision was the length and strength of the recovery to date.”

The pandemic recession was unique in a number of ways, not least how fast the contraction happened and how ferocious the recovery was.

Conventionally, a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, which this recession met after the first quarter in 2020 fell 5%. But the NBER noted that in normal times, a recession lasts “more than a few months.”…read more.