ASSOCIATED PRESS
The economy is expected to remain sluggish most of this year, after ending 2006 lethargically, as businesses and consumers cope with fallout from the painful housing slump.
The broadest barometer of the country’s economic health, gross domestic product, grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.
It was a small improvement from the 2.2 percent pace previously estimated for the fourth quarter and a 2 percent growth rate logged in the third quarter. However, the new reading still marked a lackluster showing that reinforced economists’ predictions for similarly listless activity in the coming quarters.
“I see the economy continuing this well-entrenched, below-trend economic groove that we are in,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.
According to various projections, GDP growth will remain mediocre, hovering at about the 2 percent to 2.5 percent pace in the first half of this year. In contrast, the economy’s average, or trend, growth rate is closer to 3.25 percent, economists said. Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.
In other economic news, the Labor Department said new claims filed for unemployment insurance dropped by 10,000 to 308,000 last week. That suggests the jobs market is still in good shape.
Economists, however, predict the nation’s unemployment rate, now at relatively low 4.5 percent, is likely to climb higher — perhaps closer to 5 percent by the end of this year — as businesses become more cautious in hiring in response to slower economic activity.
For all of 2007, analysts expect the economy to expand by 2.7 percent, which would be the slowest in four years. The crumbling housing market will cause some belt tightening by consumers and businesses alike, tamping down overall economic activity, analysts predict. The lingering toll of two years of interest rate increases ordered by the Federal Reserve to thwart inflation also figures into the expected cooling of economic growth.
The new GDP report comes amid growing anxiety about mounting troubles with risky mortgages, the severity of the housing slump and weakness in business investment. Those things have raised fresh questions about the country’s economic health and contributed to turbulence in the stock market.
In the fourth quarter alone, investment in home building was slashed by 19.8 percent, on an annualized basis, the most in 15 years. Pain will continue from the housing slump that started to grip the economy last year, ending a five-year housing boom.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, in a congressional appearance Wednesday, said he doesn’t expect the economy to fall into a recession this year. His predecessor, Alan Greenspan, puts the odds of a recession at one in three.
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