WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The American economy, slowed by last fall\u2019s 43-day government shutdown, grew at a sluggish 0.5% annual pace from October through December, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in downgrade of its previous estimate.<\/p>\n
U.S. gross domestic \u2014 the nation\u2019s output of goods and services \u2014 decelerated in the fourth quarter after registering impressive growth of 4.4% from July through September and 3.8% from April through June. The latest number was marked down from the Commerce Department\u2019s previous estimate of 0.7% fourth-quarter growth.<\/p>\n
Federal government spending and investment fell at a 16.6% annual pace because of the shutdown, lopping 1.16 percentage points off fourth-quarter GDP growth. Consumer spending expanded at a 1.9% pace, down a notch from the previous estimate and from 3.5% in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
For all of 2025, the economy grew 2.1% last year, slower than 2.8% in 2024 and 2.9% in 2023.<\/p>\n
The economic outlook for this year is hazy after the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran drove up energy prices and disrupted global commerce.<\/p>\n
America\u2019s job market slumped last year \u2014 recording the weakest hiring outside a recession since 2002 \u2014 but has been up and down so far in 2026: Employers added a healthy 160,000 jobs in January, slashed 133,000 in February, then created a surprising 178,000 in March.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s report was the Commerce Department\u2019s third and final estimate of fourth-quarter GDP. The first look at January-March economic growth is due April 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The American economy, slowed by last fall\u2019s 43-day government shutdown, grew at a sluggish 0.5%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,47462,169108,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-371993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-government-shutdown","11":"tag-iran-war","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}