Same Boom, Two Numbers: 19.1% Then, 14.4% Now

Nonresidential fixed investment was growing at a 19.1 percent annualized rate in 2000Q1, according to the advance vintage published in 2001Q1. The latest vintage of the same series puts that quarter at 14.4 percent — nearly five points lower, for the same three months of the same economy. Economists call these releases vintages precisely because the earlier ones keep getting rewritten by later data; the direction of this rewrite was down, and it was not small, on a series that was the dotcom boom's most-watched gauge of business spending. Fourteen percent growth is still spectacular. It just isn't nineteen. That is the comparison Econbrowser brings to the current investment wave, which comes out of the same statistical pipeline. In the 2026Q2 second release, nonresidential fixed investment is growing 8.2 percent, down from 10.1 percent in the first quarter, while the GDPNow tracker reads 9.1 percent annualized growth for the third quarter. If the dotcom episode is any guide, how big a boom was is something you find out later.