WASHINGTON — Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the U.S. — increased at an annual rate of 1.7% in the second quarter of 2013, according to the advance estimate released by the Commerce Department Wednesday.
The GDP growth was more robust than the median 1% increase projected by economists polled by Thomson Reuters. It was stronger than the downwardly revised 1.1% uptick reported in the first quarter of 2013, previously reported as a 1.8% increase.
Personal consumption expenditures increased at an annual rate of 1.8% in the second quarter, after rising at a 2.3% annual rate in the first quarter of 2013.
Exports of goods and services rose 5.4% in the second quarter, compared to a 1.3% decrease in the first quarter. Imports, which are a subtraction from GDP, increased 9.5% in the second quarter of 2013.
The overall year-over-year GDP increase reflected increases in PCE and exports as well as nonresidential fixed investment, private inventory investment and residential investment, the Commerce Department said.
Those factors were partly offset by a decline in federal government spending.
The second estimate for the second quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on Aug. 29.
The Commerce Department on Wednesday also released revised statistics of GDP and other national income and product accounts from 1929 through the first quarter of 2013. Comprehensive revisions take place about once every five years and include changes in definitions, classifications and presentations as well as statistical changes.
According to the revisions, during the period of contraction from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, real GDP decreased at an average annual rate of 2.9%. In the previously published estimates, GDP fell 3.2% during that time period.
From the second quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2013, real GDP increased at a revised annual average rate of 2.2%, which had been previously published as a 2.1% increase.
