WASHINGTON - Despite a Commerce Department report last week revealing that the economy grew at a 5.6 percent pace for Q409, economists believe that the economy has now slowed to roughly half the pace recorded at the end of 2009, the Associated Press reports.

Last week the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at a blistering 5.6 percent pace for Q409. However, economists are concerned that much of last quarter??s growth was the result of a manufacturing increase, not because of an uptick in consumer demand. In fact, data suggest that consumer spending actually weakened at the end of the year by even more than the government had estimated.

During that time, factories had begun producing goods for businesses whose inventories had shrunk in order to save cash. And experts said that if consumer spending continues to lag ?" as expected ?" that the Q409 burst in manufacturing will fade.

Analysts predict that the economy will grow between 2.5 percent and 3 percent this year, with similar numbers in Q2 and Q3. While a 3 percent growth would normally be respectable, in the midst of a recession, economic models suggest that growth in the 5 percent range is needed to drive down the unemployment rate by just one percentage point (it is currently 9.7 percent nationwide).

"Consumers are exhaling after the enormous loss of wealth from the recession. The intensive retrenchment that they were doing during the recession has ended," said Robert DiClemente, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup. "But we're only going to get moderate growth in consumer spending so I don't expect this to be a powerful recovery."

The economy??s 5.6 percent Q409 growth rate marked a significant jump from Q309??s 2.2 percent growth rate, the first increase after four straight quarters of decline.