GDP growth
Annual percentage change in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, in constant local currency.
How it is measured
Real GDP series from national accounts, year-over-year change.
Where the number came from
Growth as a headline political target is a post-1945 phenomenon. Once national accounts existed and could be compared, governments began setting numerical growth objectives and being judged against them, and the annual growth rate became the single most quoted economic statistic in the world. Making it honest required separating price changes from volume changes, which is harder than it sounds: an economy that produces the same goods at higher prices must show zero real growth. The technique has itself evolved, from fixed base years, which distorted badly as relative prices drifted, to the chain-linked indices used today, which re-weight every year. This is why growth series get revised, sometimes substantially, long after the year in question closed, and why a growth figure quoted from an old almanac may no longer match the same year in a current database.
Worked example: Guyana at 19 percent, India at 7.6, Germany at 0.2
Our 2025 figures show Guyana growing about 19.3 percent, India about 7.6 percent, China about 5.0 percent, and Germany about 0.2 percent. Ranked naively, Guyana is the world’s outstanding economy and India is nearly beating China. Both readings are wrong in instructive ways. Guyana’s rate is what happens when large offshore oil production arrives in a country of under a million people: the numerator is enormous relative to the base, and a single project can add double digits. It says almost nothing about Guyanese productivity, and the rate will fall sharply once the new output is inside the base year. India versus China is a subtler trap. Applied to the 2025 nominal figures on this site, 7.6 percent of a $3.96 trillion economy is on the order of $300 billion of additional output, while 5.0 percent of a $19.5 trillion economy is on the order of $970 billion. (Growth is measured in constant local currency and GDP here is in current dollars, so treat that as a scale illustration rather than an accounting identity.) The slower-growing economy is adding roughly three times as much. A growth rate is a ratio, and a ratio always needs its denominator quoted alongside it. Germany at 0.2 percent is the one figure here that means roughly what it appears to mean, because the base is large, stable and well measured.
Figures read from our own gdp growth table; each row there carries its observation year and whether it came from a live feed or the frozen archive.
Our data source
World Bank WDI (NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG); IMF WEO for gaps and forecasts.
Refresh cadence: Annual observations, revised as national accounts finalize. Taken on each rebuild.
What to watch for
Single-year growth is noisy: rebounds after recessions or disasters produce spectacular but misleading rates. Small economies can post double-digit swings from one project. Compare multi-year averages for trend.
CIA World Factbook equivalent field: "Real GDP growth rate" (frozen at the January 2026 final edition; our figures continue from live sources).