The Recovery Doesn't Look As Good After A Revision Buried In Today's GDP Report

The current economic recovery is still just so-so.

As part of today's initial GDP report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the BEA also revised GDP for 2011 to 2013 down to 2.0% from 2.2%.

For the period spanning the fourth quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of this year, real GDP growth remained 1.8%, the same rate as previously published.

From the BEA:

"The percent change in real GDP was revised down 0.2 percentage point for 2011, was revised down 0.5 percentage point for 2012, and was revised up 0.3 percentage point for 2013.

• For 2011, the largest contributors to the downward revision to the percent change in real GDP were a downward revision to personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and an upward revision to imports.
• For 2012, the largest contributors to the downward revision were downward revisions to PCE and to state and local government spending.
• For 2013, the largest contributors to the upward revision were upward revisions to PCE and to state and local government spending; these revisions were partly offset by a downward revision to private inventory investment."

In its report following the GDP report, The Wall Street Journal said that the recovery that began in 2009 is the weakest since World War II.

This chart shows how GDP growth has been inconsistent since the financial crisis.

This table from the BEA shows quarterly GDP through 2011 and annually going back to 2010.

The latest GDP report also included annual GDP revisions going back to 1999, seen in this table from the GDP.