Good news running strong for the United States economy. The US GDP came in strong at 33.1% for the third quarter, beating Dow Jones expectations who estimated only 32%.
This is fresh off the worst quarter the United States economy has had, perhaps in history, and shows the economy is growing at an accelerated pace despite the unexpected pandemic.
CNBC stated that the “third-quarter gross domestic product, a measure of the total goods and services produced in the July-to-September period, expanded at a 33.1% annualized pace, according to the department’s initial estimate for the period. The gain came after a 31.4% plunge in the second quarter and was better than the 32% estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The previous post-World War II record was the 16.7% burst in the first quarter of 1950. Markets reacted positively to the news, with Wall Street erasing a loss at the open and turning mostly positive.”
The growth appears to be sparked by stimulus programs, but a senior economist from AllianceBernstein, Eric Winograd, says there’s still a lot of work to do and we should expect the pace of the growth to eventually slow down.
It’s reported that consumption increases and big gains in residential and business investments helped the growth, as well as exports and decreases in government spending. This was “following the expiration of the CARES Act rescue funding subtracted from GDP.”
Despite the GDP growth, the unemployment rate still stands at a high level of 7.9% – which is more than twice the level before the pandemic. It’s stated that about 12.6 million people are unemployed in America.