A Bureau of Economic Analysis review has found problems with the way the agency has been calculating economic output statistics, confirming outside analysts’ suspicions and lending evidence to the belief that faulty statistics may be partly to blame for weak readings on first-quarter economic growth in recent years.
The review, posted on the agency’s site and dated for Wednesday, found evidence of issues with the adjustments it makes to smooth out predictable seasonal variations in the figures for the gross domestic product, one of the most closely watched economic indicators.
The problem is “residual seasonality,” or changes in the numbers that result from seasonal factors that remain even after the bureau has applied its seasonal adjustments.
A team of BEA researchers found evidence of residual seasonality creeping into the GDP figures. One factor they discovered, among others, is that seasonal variations that don’t show up in the monthly figures might appear when they aggregate the monthly statistics into quarterly numbers.
Investors and private-sector economists have suggested that residual seasonality, rather than underlying slow commerce, might be to blame for the dismal first-quarter growth of recent years.
GDP grew at just a 0.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter of this year. The corresponding figure for the first quarter of 2015 was 0.6 percent, and in 2014 it was negative 0.9 percent.
Each of those years, the disappointing first-quarter growth kicked off debates about whether the economic recovery was faltering, questions that have clouded the Federal Reserve’s judgment about the appropriate monetary policy.
The BEA said that it would work to correct for the issues it found with seasonal adjustments.
