The Commerce Department released its third and final estimate of its first quarter GDP figure late last week, and it was unchanged from the second estimate, remaining at 1.9 percent. But despite the stability of the overall figure, many of the components of the GDP were significantly revised.
The biggest change was to corporate profits. The original estimate showed corporate profits having risen by $11.4 billion in the first quarter, but they're now figured to have dropped by $6.4 billion. But all in all, the growth has been relatively stable. Corporate domestic profits increased by $26.3 billion in the first quarter of 2012, after having increased by $29.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011.
In other categories, the largest upward revisions came from an increase in nonresidential fixed investment and an overestimate of the number of imports we took in for the first quarter. These were almost exactly offset by downward revisions to exports, personal consumption expenditures, and inventory investment, leaving the GDP figure unchanged. The second quarter GDP estimate is due out at the end of this month, on July 27.
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