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 product \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<\/a>.<\/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 1.9%, down a notch from the previous estimate and from 3.5% in the second quarter. Spending on goods \u2014 such as cars and clothing \u2014 grew just 0.3%, down from 3% in the July-September period. <\/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 Business investment, excluding housing, increased at a 2.4% pace, likely reflecting money being poured into artificial intelligence, but the increase was down from 3.2% in the third quarter.<\/p>\n A category within the GDP data that measures the economy\u2019s underlying strength weakened from October through December, growing at a 1.8% clip, down from 2.9% in the third quarter. This category includes consumer spending and private investment, but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.<\/p>\n The economic outlook for this year is hazy after the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/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":577694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,3505,8876,101,793,801,228242,10066,9293,795],"class_list":{"0":"post-577693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-district-of-columbia","10":"tag-economic-indicators","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-iran-war","15":"tag-u-s-department-of-commerce","16":"tag-u-s-government-shutdown","17":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}