{"id":44222,"date":"2025-09-26T09:55:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T09:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/44222\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T09:55:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T09:55:15","slug":"us-economic-growth-revised-up-on-strong-consumer-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/44222\/","title":{"rendered":"US economic growth revised up on strong consumer spending"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US economy grew faster than previously thought this spring, fuelled by robust consumer spending and falling imports, according to new government data.<\/p>\n

Gross domestic product (GDP), which measures goods and services production, rose at an annualised rate of 3.8% in the period from April through June – up from the previous estimate of 3.3%. <\/p>\n

The second quarter growth – the fastest pace in nearly two years – followed a contraction earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Economists said the US economy was doing reasonably well but some uncertainties remain.<\/p>\n

Consumer spending rose by 2.5% in the year to the end of June, up from a previous estimate of 1.6%.<\/p>\n

In the first three months of 2025, the US economy shrank at a rate of 0.6% as companies rushed in imports to get ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which chipped away at GDP.<\/p>\n

American consumers, the engine of the world’s largest economy, have remained resilient in the face of tariffs and economic uncertainty. <\/p>\n

Retail sales rose 0.6% in August from the prior month, beating expectations, according to data from the Commerce Department released last week.<\/p>\n

The continued strength in spending, which has defied worries about a slowdown, is in contrast to recent data showing a weakening labour market. <\/p>\n

Employers added just 22,000 jobs<\/a> in August, fewer than expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.2% to 4.3%, according to the Labor Department.<\/p>\n

But initial claims for unemployment insurance fell last week to their lowest level since July, the Labor Market said on Thursday, in a sign that the jobs market might not be in as dire shape as other data have suggested.<\/p>\n

“The latest economic data are considerably more upbeat than the droopy August jobs report,” said Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank. <\/p>\n

“The latest GDP and jobless claims data should ease the bout of anxiety kicked off by the weak August jobs report.”<\/p>\n

Economic momentum remained steady in the first half of the year despite mounting policy headwinds, said Lydia Boussour, senior economist at EY-Parthenon. <\/p>\n

But she cautioned that “with the impact of tariffs and policy uncertainty becoming increasingly visible, slower US growth and higher inflation are still on the horizon.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US economy grew faster than previously thought this spring, fuelled by robust consumer spending and falling imports,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-44222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44222","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=44222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}