Economists expect growth to slow to a still solid 3 percent annual rate the rest of the year, resulting in full-year growth of 3 percent for 2018. It would be the best performance since 2005, two years before the Great Recession began. The 4.2 percent annual growth that the government estimated for last quarter is the strongest such figure since a 4.3 percent annual gain in the third quarter of 2014. The expectation of 3 percent growth for 2018 as a whole would be up from gains of 1.6 percent in 2016 and 2.2 percent last year. Since the recovery began in mid-2009, growth has been sub-par, with annual gains averaging just 2.2 percent, making it the weakest recovery in the post-war period.
