The latest Australian Cities Accounts report by SGS shows Canberra recorded 0.7 per cent gross state product growth in 2013-14.

It is the smallest since John Howard's massive public service cuts, when the gross state product growth rate was 0 per cent.

But the report said Canberrans can find some hope in history - the economy bounced back strongly after the cutbacks of 1996.

Nationally, gross domestic product growth was more than 2.5 per cent last financial year, SGS said.

The reason for the large drop in growth in the territory was that the public service made up nearly a third of the ACT economy. About 6500 public service job cuts in the national capital were slated in the federal budget.

The public service makes up about the same proportion of the Canberra economy as it did in 1996. The only difference was that the construction sector is now also a big player.

Construction made up 2.3 per cent of the territory economy in the mid-1990s and now it is 10 per cent.

But recent media reports have said construction in the residential market was likely to be slow.

House price growth in Canberra has been volatile recently and the latest data has shown the market going backwards, with median house prices down by 1.7 per cent over the September quarter.

Added to that the unemployment rate has rising sharply, from 5.1 per cent in September to 5.4 per cent during October. It is the highest unemployment rate recorded by Canberra since July 2001.

The SGS report said outsourced professional services had also increased, from 6 per cent to 8 per cent of the local economy, but had suffered badly in the past financial year.

Professional services, along with the financial and wholesale sectors, held back the ACT's overall growth.

Retail, construction, health care and education also stagnated during the year.

The ACT's per capita gross state product shrunk in 2013-14. Only regional NSW, by a large margin, and Perth, by a smaller difference, were worse when gross state product was divided by the population of each region.

Areas around Canberra that are part of regional NSW are doing worse than anywhere else.

Country areas and smaller towns and cities on coastal NSW made a -12.5 per cent contribution to the nation's GDP growth.

The best contributors to national GDP were Sydney, which made up 37.9 per cent of the national growth recorded, regional West Australia (29 per cent), Melbourne (12 per cent) and Brisbane (7.3 per cent).