The US economy grew at a slightly stronger pace than previously thought in the second quarter, the government said today in a report.
The report portrayed the United States as barely avoiding a contraction in the months before the September 11th aircraft attacks.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic health, advanced by 0.3 per cent in the three months ended in June, the Commerce Department said.
That was a bit better than the 0.2 per cent the department had estimated for the period a month ago.
But GDP still turned in its weakest showing since the first quarter of 1993, when the economy shrank 0.1 per cent.
That the economy grew at all is significant because economists, who believe the economy will shrink in the third quarter, loosely define a recession as two straight quarters of falling GDP.
A slower pace of demand for imports, which are a drag on growth, helped nudge the second-quarter GDP figure higher.