Uncle Sam cut spending and businesses drew down inventories in the fourth quarter of 2012, causing the U.S. economy to contract for the first time in more than three years.

But don't start throwing around the R-word just yet.

"No one I know would seriously call this an indicator of recession," said Bill Hampel, chief economist with the Credit Union National Association.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic growth, contracted at an annual rate of 0.1% from October to December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. It was the first quarterly contraction since the second quarter of 2009, amid the Great Recession.

While a contraction is never encouraging, economists pointed to temporary effects that may have caused a one-time dip, and they see better growth ahead.

It's "the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you'll ever see," Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics said in a research note. "The drag from defense spending and inventories is a one-off. The rest of the report is all encouraging."

A large cut in federal spending, primarily on defense, was one of the biggest drags on growth. Defense spending contracted at a 22% annual rate.

Alan Kreuger, head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, attributed the deep decline to the looming sequestration deadline.

"A likely explanation for the sharp decline in Federal defense spending is uncertainty concerning the automatic spending cuts that were scheduled to take effect in January, and are currently scheduled to take effect on March 1st," he said in a blog post.

Defense spending tends to be a volatile number in the GDP report, and is unlikely to decline so dramatically next quarter, Hampel said.