February GDP, January GDP Revision and March/Q1 Projection

Statistics Canada came out with a basket of news today - some good, some not so good, but nothing outright bad or ugly. January GDP was revised upward to 0.6% from 0.5%. For February, growth was a more modest 0.1% - well down from their flash estimate of 0.5%. Construction activity posted was up 0.3% across-the-board in February. This was also the fifth consecutive month that the sector as a whole was up, and the second in which all subsectors were up, including non-residential (which also increased 0.3%). Finally, the projection for Q1 GDP is an increase of 2.4% annualized (0.6% for Q1 compared to Q4 2022). Now, the "not so good" - StatsCan's flash estimate for March GDP is a decline of 0.1%, meaning that almost all of the Q1 growth happened in January. Some pundits are saying that we are now headed into a "mild" recession in Q2 and Q3 (for what it's worth, we agree). The StatsCan article is available here.