In the interest of watching the statisticians work their fictional magic, I thought it might be educational to track the economic contraction as it develops and see to what extent it shows up in the official figures. Notice that according to the current Advance report on the fourth quarter of 2008, the economy actually grew 1.3 percent this year. I’m guessing that they just might revise that down a bit in the next report or two.
Quarter | Adv | Prelim | Final | Revised | Annual |
2008 Q1 | 0.6 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 0.9 | |
2008 Q2 | 1.9 | 3.3 | 2.8 | 2.8 | |
2008 Q3 | -0.3 | -0.5 | -0.3 | -0.5 | |
2008 Q4 | -3.8 | 1.3 | |||
2007 Q1 | 1.2 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.1 | |
2007 Q2 | 3.4 | 4.0 | 3.8 | 4.8 | |
2007 Q3 | 3.9 | 4.9 | 3.9 | 4.8 | |
2007 Q4 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.6 | -0.2 | 2.0 |
2006 Q4 | 3.5 | 2.2 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 2.8 |