Germany Suffered Lengthy Recession After All, Revised Data Show

Germany’s economy succumbed to a recession in late 2022 and didn’t grow for the two years that followed, according to revised statistics.

While data available before Wednesday have shown annual contractions for 2023 and 2024, the quarterly profile for gross domestic product in Europe’s largest economy hinted at a stop-go pace that never produced two consecutive periods of decline — the traditional definition of a recession.

That’s now changed after a customary revision of data published by the statistics office alongside numbers for the three months through June. It reveals six declines in output over seven quarters, interrupted only by stagnation in the summer of 2023.
Germany Suffered Recession After All

Statistics office made major revisions to GDP data

Results prior to revision…

and afterward

The updated series captures what business executives and confidence gauges described all along: that the German economy was struggling to sustain even modest growth as firms grappled with supply chain disruptions, high energy costs and bureaucracy — issues that existed long before American President Donald Trump threatened to undermine trade.

Even though a tariff deal between the US and the European Union is now in place, the outlook remains gloomy, with economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicting growth of just 0.2% this year.

That follows annual contractions of 0.9% in 2023 and 0.5% in 2024 that were much steeper than previously reported declines of 0.3% and 0.2% respectively.

The updated figures incorporate “newly available statistical information,” officials said in a statement. They cited the resulting impact on quarterly data as amounting to downgrades of as much as 0.7 percentage point and upgrades of up to 0.6 percentage point.