The U.S. economy is better than it looks – Twin Cities
The U.S. economy was weaker than expected in the third quarter, which is bad news for any American whose livelihood depends on strong economic growth and especially disappointing for the White House, which is struggling to reassure voters about the state of the economy amid rising prices and a historic supply crunch.
Overall growth in the third quarter was 2%, a fair step down from rates of 4.5% and 6.7% the U.S. economy logged in the first and second quarters.
On closer inspection, however, the report looks a lot better.
For starters, the federal government’s most comprehensive measure of economywide demand, something called final sales to domestic purchasers, rose roughly 6.6%. Notably, it’s almost perfectly on track with the pre-pandemic trend. This measure, unlike the headline GDP number, isn’t adjusted for inflation. So it’s indicating that businesses, consumers and the government spent more, but they took home fewer…
