Heather du Plessis-Allan: The GDP numbers confirm what we're all feeling

It's fair to say that the GDP figures out this morning came as a shock- it's a lot weaker than economists were expecting.

Economists were tending to forecast a bit of growth, around 0.2 percent to 3 percent, and instead what they saw was the economy slumped 0.3 percent for the third quarter, which is July through to September.

And if you calculate it per capita to account for all the extra people who arrived here during that time, it's even worse- the slump is 0.9 percent, which is actually quite material. 

Now even more than that, the statisticians have revised what happened earlier this year and they're now saying that Q1 was also negative, which means we had a technical recession over last summer.

The fact is, if you look at today's number, you look at the fact that this economy's not flash right now, you could probably say we're in another technical recession right now this summer.

That's probably not news to you, these numbers are probably only telling you what you're already feeling.

If you're in retail, you've noticed sales are slowing- it's tough graft at the moment. If you're in hospitality, you know people aren't eating and drinking out like they used to. If you're in construction, the jobs may be fewer.

It's tough, the numbers are just backing it up.

Now politically - there is always a political element to this - this is good for National and the new Government because as weird as it sounds, they now have data to prove the mess they say Labour left for us all.

As for Grant Robertson in particular, this really sucks because this is the third piece of bad money news that he has had in two days.

There is a slumping economy that he's left us with, he just had a slap-down from the Auditor-General about how fast and loose he was being with the infrastructure spending, and then the mega-ferries deal got cancelled because it was blowing out.

Now Grant is apparently sticking around this term for the time being, to try and defend Labour's track record on spending. He's got one hell of a job, given what's going on right now.

But let's be honest right now, frankly this is probably not what you care about. You care about what this means for you. The good news is, this makes it way less likely that the Reserve Bank will lift our mortgage rates again.

Adrian Orr can talk as big as he likes about how he's going to do that and how that's a possibility. But at the moment, it looks like the economy is suffering enough.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.