The Commerce Department released on Wednesday its "advance" estimate for the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter of 2020, which revealed the U.S. economy shrank more than forecast in the reviewed period.

According to the estimate, the U.S. real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 4.8 percent q-o-q last quarter, following a 2.1 percent q-o-q growth in the fourth quarter of 2019, in part, due to the response to the spread of COVID-19, as governments issued "stay-at-home" orders in March. That marked the steepest pace of contraction in GDP since the fourth quarter of 2008.

Economists had expected GDP to fall by 4.0 percent.

According to the report, the decline in real GDP in the first quarter reflected negative contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), nonresidential fixed investment, exports, and private inventory investment that were partly offset by positive contributions from residential fixed investment, federal government spending, and state and local government spending. Meanwhile, imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, dropped.