Wednesday, a widely followed measure of economic growth showed growth coming to a complete standstill.

Data published through today, when passed through the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNOW tracker estimated that economic growth in the United States has dropped to zero, from 0.9% last week. Retail sales, and consumer prices released since then pulled down the estimate to zero.

This raises the risk of a technical recession, since it indicates the economy will contract for a second consecutive quarter, the technical definition of a recession. The first quarter saw a 1.5% annual rate of contraction by this measure.

It is important to note, GDPNOW is not a prediction system, but rather a model which takes current economic growth and shows what it indicates about the state of the economy presently.