In early 2021, an economist at a financial firm argued, “If we want to recover from the pandemic, it’s not just a matter of getting to where we were back in February [2020] and declaring victory.” Why wouldn’t economists consider the economy to have recovered from the pandemic if the level of real GDP returned to its February 2020 level, the month before the pandemic started? Wouldn’t the economy have returned to full employment if GDP had returned to its February 2020 level?