It looks like the economy got the spring awakening we were all hoping for. After contracting during the winter, U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 4 percent annual pace from April through June, according to the Commerce Department. Overall, it has expanded at about a 1 percent rate during the first six months of the year.*
These are preliminary numbers that will be revised. But they seem to confirm that our first-quarter economic shrinkage was indeed a fluke, in part due to the freakishly bad weather. The Wall Street Journal notes that, with revisions, the economy grew at a 4 percent rate during the back half of 2013, making it “the best six-month stretch in 10 years.” We’re not exactly on a roll yet, but there’s some pretty good reasons to be optimistic.
*Correction, July 31, 2014: This post originally misstated that the economy grew by about 1 percent during the first half of 2014. It grew at a rate of about 1 percent.
