President Trump’s target for economic growth just got a little more distant.

The government reported Friday that the economy grew by only 1.6 percent last year, shy of what experts had estimated and well below the 4 percent rate that Mr. Trump has vowed to deliver — a pledge now cited on the White House website.

There are plenty of signs of life in the economy. Consumer spending is healthy, and an index of consumer sentiment just hit a 12-year high. Stocks have been surging, and the jobless rate is near what the Federal Reserve considers full employment.

But however solid, the recovery under President Barack Obama never reached exuberance. It is the second longest recovery in American history but the first in the postwar era in which growth for a full year did not hit 3 percent.

Mr. Trump made that data point a focus of his campaign, citing factories that closed during the recession but never reopened and workers who gave up looking for jobs and dropped out of the labor force. And economists, even if they disagree with his policy prescriptions, acknowledge that many areas have been left behind.