America's economic recovery hits a major roadblock

This summer, the American economic recovery hit a roadblock.

The US economy grew at an annualized rate of only 2% in the third quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday.

The highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus, supply chain chaos, worker shortages, sluggish jobs numbers and higher prices weighed on economic activity.

It was far lower than the 2.7% economists had predicted and the slowest pace of growth since the start of the recovery, as well as a massive step down from the 6.7% rate in the spring.

Aside from the monumental downturn in the first half of 2020, when the economy ground to a halt amid lockdowns, it was also the worst quarterly performance since the final quarter of 2019, when GDP grew at a pace of 1.9%.