So Thursday's GDP June quarter data will uncover the country's worst kept secret - New Zealand went into recession over the first half in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the run-up to previous releases, the arguments between economists were about fractions of a percentage point.
This time around, the debate is over whether economic growth fell by 11 per cent, 13 per cent, or somewhere in the middle.
Regardless, it can be taken as read that it will be the biggest quarterly fall in economic growth since records began.
Under the current GDP framework - formulated in 1987 - New Zealand's biggest fall was a 2.4 per cent decline in the March 1991 quarter.
Stats NZ says that under the previous framework, which dates back to 1955, the largest fall was 4.4 per cent - in December 1977.
The department has already said the unprecedented nature of the rapid economic shock caused by the lockdown has meant that some data sources and methods have had difficulty measuring Covid-19-related effects.
While the June quarter will make for an ugly read, the current September quarter will at least capture a post-lockdown bounceback.
"Brace yourself for the sharpest quarterly economic contraction that you're likely to ever see," ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said.
Several banks have rowed back from their initial, far grimmer, forecasts for the second quarter.
ANZ had predicted a 17.5 per cent decline but Zollner now sees a 12 per cent fall, reflecting the release of supplementary data.
"We're not going to get too hung up on the Q2 figures," Zollner said.
"For macro-policy settings it's the medium-term outlook that matters, and this will remain riddled with challenges regardless of where Stats NZ estimate Q2 GDP to be," she said.
Zollner added that policymakers would largely "look through" the data.
Economists said New Zealand had shown surprising resilience to the Covid-19 hammer blow.
ASB Bank now expects the data to show the economy to have contracted by 11 per cent in the June quarter, compared to its previous forecast of 13 per cent.
"The second quarter did not fall as far as we expected," ASB senior economist Jane Turner said.
"That is quite encouraging because if we have to re-enter these alert level restrictions, it means that it is not doing as much damage as we previously thought," she said.
"The thing that impressed us was just how resilient the New Zealand economy was."
The silver lining on the cloud hanging over the economy will be the impact of an economy bouncing back from lockdowns.
Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said Alert Level 4 lockdown effectively put about a third of the economy out of action during April.
"However, activity appears to have bounced back readily as the alert level was lowered," he said.
Westpac estimates that GDP was 11.5 per cent lower in the June quarter, following a 1.6 per cent drop in the March quarter that included the first week of the lockdown.
"Such a massive change inevitably comes with a wide margin of uncertainty. And it won't be the final word on the matter, as GDP figures can be subject to revisions for years afterward as more data becomes available," Gordon said.
While the depth of the second-quarter hit to the economy is of interest, what's more crucial is how far the rebound extends, he said.
Assuming no new level 4 lockdown, Westpac expects GDP to jump by around 8 per cent in the September quarter and almost 4 per cent in the December quarter.
That would bring GDP to around 5 per cent below its pre-Covid trend by the end of the year, Gordon says.
"However, that gap represents the loss of international travel and tourism due to border closures, so is likely to persist for some time."
