U.S. gross domestic product rose just 2 percent in the third quarter — slower than expected — as the super-recovery from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed amid rampant inflation and shortages, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday.
America’s gross domestic product — the value of all the goods and services produced here — grew TK percent from July to September compared to the same period last year, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
That’s a significant slowdown from the 6.7 percent rise in GDP growth we saw last quarter, as the economy moved forward thanks to rapid vaccinations and pent-up spending demand from Americans across the country.
Economists polled by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal expected an annual growth rate of 2.8% in the third quarter.
The lackluster economic growth in the last quarter of the year came as companies across the country faced various operational challenges — from a labor shortage to a faltering global supply chain — that are likely to drive sales down.
The Fed on Thursday also released a separate report that showed that new jobless claims, which are seen as a proxy for layoffs, fell to 281,000 last week, down 10,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 291,000.
Economists polled by Dow Jones expected initial jobless claims last week to remain unchanged at exactly 290,000.
Weekly new claims are down significantly from the 2020 peak of about 6.1 million new claims in one week.
The weekly numbers have come close to historical averages over the past month. The US was requesting about 200,000 new claims a week before the pandemic devastated the economy.
Continuing orders are down 237,000 from the previous week’s revised level, according to the new data. That number reached more than 7 million at the same time last year, in the midst of the pandemic.
more than 2.4 The federation added that one million Americans were still receiving traditional government unemployment benefits as of Thursday.
The weekly report comes after the September jobs report came in much lower than economists had expected, adding just 194,000 jobs for the month.
The September numbers came in well below economists’ expectations of adding 500,000 jobs, and come after the country added a disappointing 366,000 jobs in August.
Economists said a pair of back-to-back disappointing reports indicated that the employment recovery is likely to take longer and be more bumpy than expected.
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh admitted that wasn’t the “best number” but blamed the poor state of the economy on the pandemic only, saying the outbreak of cases had sent people back home.
“There is no doubt that we have work to do. Number one, we are still living with an epidemic, it is a global epidemic,” Walsh He said on “Axios on HBO” Sunday evening.
“Also, people who are interested in the delta formula, people who are concerned about their personal health. We have people who have been vaccinated, people who have not been vaccinated, people who have been vaccinated who are concerned about people who have not been vaccinated.
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