The Commerce Department announced this morning that American GDP in the first quarter of 2014 declined a stunning 2.9 percent. That’s the first decline in GDP since the first quarter of 2011 and the biggest decline since the first quarter of 2009, while the economy was still in the throes of the Great Recession.

When the Commerce Department first announced first quarter GDP, in April, it measured it at being up .1 percent. In May it revised the figure to down 1 percent, and now it’s down 2.9 percent. Early GDP figures are often substantially revised, but this beat the estimate of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal, which was a 2 percent decline.

To be sure, the awful winter much of the country suffered had caused shoppers to stay home and many construction projects to be halted. But manufacturers drew down inventory and exports were down by a substantial 8.9 percent as other economies, especially in Europe, remain subpar.

The economy is expected to rebound in the second quarter, which ends on Monday, and no one is expecting a further decline in GDP. (Two consecutive quarters of declining GDP is the standard definition of a recession, by the way.) But even if the second quarter lives up to expectations of 3.6 percent growth, the growth for the first half of 2014 will be well below the 2 percent average since the economy began to expand in June 2009. American GDP growth over the long term has been a little over 3 percent.

So the American economy in the Obama recovery continues to sputter and wheeze.