US Economy Shrank by 1.5% in Q1 but Consumers Kept Spending
News 18The US economy shrank in the first three months of the year even though consumers and businesses kept spending at a solid pace, the government reported Thursday in a slight downgrade of its previous estimate for the January-March quarter. Last quarter’s drop in the US gross domestic product the broadest gauge of economic output does not likely signal the start of a recession. The Commerce Department estimated that the economy contracted at a 1.5% annual pace from January through March, a slight downward revision from its first estimate of 1.4%, which it issued last month. It was the first drop in GDP since the second quarter of 2020 in the depths of the COVID-19 recession and followed a robust 6.9% expansion in the final three months of 2021.