Gross Domestic Product First Quarter 2016 Third Estimate

The annualized GDP growth rate in the third estimate of the first quarter of 2016 was 1.08 percent, up from 0.83 percent in the second estimate and from 0.53 percent in the first estimate. The first quarter result was down from 1.38 percent in Q4 last year. Normally there are two revisions of the first estimate and sometimes three. Revisions to the four quarters of 2015 were +0.4 percent, +1.59 percent, +0.5 percent and +0.69 percent respectively. GDP is measured and reported in chained 2009 dollars and in the third estimate of Q1 was $16.515 trillion. The growth calculation is misleading because it takes the Q over Q change and multiplies by 4 to get an annualized rate. This makes the high quarters higher and the low quarters lower. Figure 1 clearly shows this effect.