The view of the nation’s economy for the rest of the year looks brighter even though the recession has turned out to be worse than initially realized, according to Lexington-based forecasting company IHS Global Insight.

"Recent data revisions have shown us that the recession was deeper than first thought, in GDP terms, with a 3.9 percent decline in real GDP from the second quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009," said IHS Chief U.S. Economist Nigel Gault in his company’s U.S. Economic Forecast Summary for August.

"But even though we still expect the recovery to be a slow one, the incoming evidence suggests that the pick-up in growth in the second half of the year will be more rapid than anticipated. We have raised our growth forecast for the second half to an average 2.2 percent pace, from 0.9 percent in our July forecast," he said.

Third-quarter growth will depend on "the turn in the inventory cycle," single-family home sales, business equipment spending and the Federal Reserve leaving interest rates untouched until next year.

"We do not expect the Federal Reserve to begin to raise interest rates until the third quarter of 2010," Gault wrote.