US GDP maintains contraction of 0.4% in the first quarter

U.S. gross domestic product saw a 0.4% decline in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the previous three months, according to a second estimate of data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday. The Government (BEA, for its English acronym), which confirms the initial reading, was released in April.

The macroeconomic data for the first quarter represents a correction compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, when the US economy recorded a quarterly expansion of 1.7%.

The office attributed the decline observed between January and March to the recovery in Covid-19 cases due to the omicron variable and lower payments by the government as part of the pandemic aid packages. Other factors such as supply chain problems or high inflation were also affected.

With this data, the country’s GDP recorded in the first quarter was 2.8% higher than that recorded in the last quarter of 2019, before the pandemic hit the United States. In this way, the authority maintained the forecasts published in the previous month. In the fourth quarter, GDP was 3.1% above pre-pandemic levels.

From a purely annual perspective, the office’s preferred way of viewing data, US GDP contracted 1.5% in the first quarter, compared to an annual increase of 6.9% in the fourth. This is a decrease of one-tenth compared to the initial estimate, which had expected a decline of 1.4%.