The advance estimate for Q4 GDP was not appreciably different than the preliminary figures, changing +0.6% into +1.00033%. It wasn’t anywhere close to enough of a revision to meaningfully alter the picture of the 2015 economy. The average growth in 2015 was just 2.40% (until the next revision next month) compared to 2.43% in 2014; while the average of SAAR continuously compounded rates was hugely disappointing at only 1.86%.

Economists also use an additional calculation for yearly growth, comparing any year’s Q4 estimate with the prior year’s Q4. On that basis, the US economy also seriously underperformed with the latest upward revision being inconsequential.

GDP growth via this standard was as bad in 2015 as in 2011 or 2012. It has been rare (recession rare) to find growth below 2% in any yearly comparison, yet three have appeared in this one “cycle” alone. Having encompassed six years now, it offers still more compelling evidence that there was a paradigm alteration during the Great Recession; or, more specifically, the Great Recession revealed the extent of prior economic damage done.

In terms of cyclicality, GDP is largely unhelpful in determining any inflections as it is, but in this current environment I suspect that post hoc revisions will make it even more difficult to find here. In other words, as deficient as 2015 was in GDP, it’s not at all clear that we have any idea to what actual degree. Take the case of 2012 which held a very significant number of parallels in estimates and the behavior of economic accounts which remained outside of GDP for several years (the initial runs for GDP showed only one significantly weak quarter, Q4 2012). It wasn’t until the Census Bureau’s bi-decadal Enterprise Census that GDP was scaled back to better match contemporary indications showing at the time much more severe weakness. As I wrote last summer:

The 2012 slowdown, now finding its way to GDP, shows the same permanent alteration in trajectory as so many other non-adjusted economic accounts. That has great implications for our current circumstances, not least of which is how GDP in 2014 (and likely 2015) might be similarly overstating the post-slowdown economy. If retail sales, capital goods orders, import activity (China’s economy, Brazil, etc., etc.) all found the slowdown years before GDP, then it is reasonable to assume similar circumstances where the same divergence shows up again; i.e., right now. That is especially true when these other accounts are considerably worse now than they were in 2012 and early 2013.