U.S. economy expands at 2.3% in second quarter, picking up speed
Source: Washington Post
Wonkblog
By Chico Harlan July 30 at 8:30 AM
The U.S. economy picked up speed between April and June after a winter crawl, new government data showed Thursday, helped by a boost in consumer spending that returned the nation to its pace of solid but unspectacular growth. ... Data from the Department of Commerce showed that the economy expanded at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent in the second quarter, a tick below market expectations.
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The latest numbers show an economy that is benefiting from growing disposable income — the product of low inflation and falling gasoline prices — while doing enough to weather the challenges of a strong dollar and energy investment cutbacks. Growth in the second quarter remained modest, particularly compared with the breakneck pace seen in much of 2014, but it also signaled a bounce-back from a surprisingly sluggish start to the year.
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Also on Thursday, as part of an adjustment to its formula for measuring seasonal growth, the Commerce Department tweaked gross domestic product numbers going back several years. On balance, the revisions revealed a recovery that is more underwhelming than previously estimated, with growth averaging a 2 percent, rather than a 2.3 percent, annual pace since 2011.
Still, the revisions also boosted the U.S.’s performance in the first quarter of 2015, turning a 0.2 percent contraction into a 0.6 percent expansion. Some economists had previously said that the government’s formula for seasonal adjustments tended to deflate first quarter numbers.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/30/u-s-to-release-gdp-numbers-for-second-quarter/
Re: "Also on Thursday, as part of an adjustment to its formula for measuring seasonal growth, the Commerce Department tweaked gross domestic product numbers going back several years." There's a chart to this that I can't link to. You can click on it to see how the numbers have been changed.
The tweaked numbers will keep the conspiracy theorists busy for a while.
