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US fourth quarter growth revised down to 5.6 percent
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US fourth quarter growth revised down to 5.6 percent
AFP - Saturday, March 27
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The US Commerce Department revealed that the economy expanded at 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter, the government said Friday, revising downward an earlier estimate of 5.9 percent gross domestic product growth.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - – The US economy grew at a slower pace than expected in the final quarter of 2009 as consumer and business spending slackened amid a fragile recovery from recession, the government said Friday.
The world's largest economy grew by 5.6 percent in the October-December period, the Commerce Department said, revising downward an earlier estimate of 5.9 percent growth in gross domestic product, a key economic benchmark.
The growth estimate cutback came from downward revisions to business investment, inventories, and consumer spending, the department said.
But the new reading still marked the most robust growth in six years.
Analysts had expected the world's largest economy to grow at 5.9 percent in the final quarter from 2.2 percent in the third quarter.
The US economy started growing only in the second half of last year after plunging into a brutal recession in December 2007 triggered by a home mortgage meltdown that sparked a global financial crisis
Despite the second half growth, the US economy contracted by 2.4 percent for the whole of 2009 -- the largest one-year contraction of the US economy since 1938 -- compared to a 0.4 percent growth in 2008.
In the 2009 final quarter, the government revised downwards non-residential fixed investment, private investment in inventories, and personal consumption expenditures.
Corporate profits however rose 109 billion dollars during the period due to cost-cutting and stronger business demand after they grappled with a year of economic contraction, data showed Friday.
It marked the fourth straight quarterly increase in profits.
"Really good news: fourth quarter corporate profits were 30.6 percent higher than in the fourth quarter of 2008 -- this was the biggest increase in 25 years," noted IHS chief economist Nariman Behravesh.
US economic growth is expected to slow in the near term but the recovery will continue and then pick up in the second half of 2010, analysts said.
The economy is expected to see annualized growth of around 2.0 to 2.5 percent over the next few quarters, analysts at Moody's Economy.com said.
This, plus the lift from a burst of temporary hiring by the Census Department, should be enough to lead to consistent job growth as the economy battled with nearly double digit unemployment, a thorn on the side of growth, they said.
These factors "will boost consumer and business confidence, allowing the recovery to gain traction," said Augustine Faucher, director of macroeconomics for Moody's Economy.com.
Growth will improve toward the end of this year, and then accelerate throughout 2011, helping bring down the unemployment rate, which is expected to peak at 10.3 percent toward the end of 2010 from the current 9.7 percent, Faucher said.
But other analysts caution that lackluster housing sector, the epicenter of the financial crisis, and a possible drop in exports could dampen growth.
"Net exports, given the strength in the dollar and the clouded economic outlook in Europe, not to mention the after-effects of the credit-tightening moves in India and China, cannot be relied upon to contribute much, if anything, to headline GDP growth for the remainder of the year," warned David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff.
"Residential and commercial real estate construction remain... a particular concern: the growth of the former was revised significantly downward" in the final 2009 quarter, noted Inna Mufteeva, an analyst at Natixis.
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