The Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its third estimate of second quarter GDP on Wednesday. Its previous estimate said that the economy grew at a 1.5% annual rate in the second quarter, after growing at a 2.1% annual rate in the first.
GDP is a measure of how much output the economy is producing, and the BEA tallies it by looking at who’s buying all of that output.
“So is it consumers — you’ve got consumer spending,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “Is it businesses doing investments — so, that’s investment spending.”
GDP also includes government spending and net exports. But Kelly said the first part of that list — consumer spending — has been resilient lately, partly because of the bigger tax refunds people got this year.
“And then, there’s also just this wealth effect,” he said. “We’re just coming up on the four year anniversary of a massive bull market in stocks, and that has generated a lot of wealth, making for a very resilient consumer.”
Then, there’s investment spending. Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said businesses have been investing a lot in inventories.
“When you look at a lot of the survey data, businesses are saying that their inventories are quite low, which means they need to re-stock,” Yaros said.
He also said there has been plenty of investment in AI — spending on data centers and all the equipment that goes into them. But he said a lot of that spending is boosting GDP more — in Taiwan, Korea, and other countries that make that equipment.
“I think we have to be careful not to overstate the benefits to growth and the economy,” Yaros said, “because a lot of the AI spending by businesses is imported from abroad.”
A lot of the factors that are powering growth right now also might not last. Matthew Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at Manulife John Hancock Investments, said consumers might not keep spending the way they have been.
“The tax cuts are going to be hard to replicate,” Miskin said. “Consumers are dealing with higher oil prices and higher mortgage rates at the same time.”
And consumer spending depends on a strong labor market. Miskin said it will take a lot for GDP to keep growing at a steady pace.
“I think you need to see broadening of the job gains, I think you need to see people that are moving up the job corporate ladder,” he said. “I think that’s really hard right now, still.”
Miskin said he expects GDP to pick up in the third quarter and slow down in the fourth.
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