The Economic Winter Is Far From Over
You can’t blame it on the weather this time—for the third consecutive year the US economy started off on the wrong foot, as GDP achieved only a 0.5% annual gain.
Instead of a harsh winter that hurt productivity, we experienced one of the mildest winters on the books. This helped builders fit more working days into the calendar, but that’s a double-edged sword—there’s little to bounce back from now and we can’t expect the spring surge that normally accompanies good weather, Bloomberg reports.
Growth estimates for this quarter are only 1.4% after one of the US economy’s worst showings in years. That’s far away from the Q2 surges of 4.6% and 3.9% in 2014 and 2015, respectively, making us wonder how long this economic winter will last. [Bloomberg]
