US makes good progress on road to recovery

The US recession ended in the third quarter of 2009 and the economy expanded at a reasonable pace in the first 18 months of the recovery, with GDP growth averaging 3% in 2010.

However, the economy slowed quite a bit in 2011, with GDP growth averaging just 1.7% last year.

The pace of GDP growth slowed to almost a standstill in the opening half of last year before gradually picking up momentum thereafter. The slowdown was partly due to temporary factors such as bad weather, lower defence spending, the impact of higher oil prices and interruptions to activity caused by the Japanese earthquake. Thus, the expectation was that the economy would regain momentum as these factors abated.