Tag: U.S. Economy

U.S. Economic Growth Beats Expectations in Second Quarter

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.8 percent in the second quarter of 2024, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday.

Higher growth in the second quarter follows poor growth in the first quarter of 2024, which measured 1.4 percent after being revised down from an initial estimate of 1.6 percent, according to the BEA. Economists expected that GDP would increase by around 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2024, in line with typical U.S economic growth rates.

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U.S. Economic Growth in First Quarter Worse than Previously Thought

Virginia Star Staff
Jerome Powell and Joe Biden (composite image)

The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024 amid a slowdown in consumer spending, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced Thursday.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was revised down in the first quarter from 1.6 percent to 1.3 percent year-over-year in a sign that the economy is not as strong as initial estimates indicated, according to a release from the BEA. Economists originally expected growth in the first quarter to be around 2.2 percent, more in line with the above trend growth seen in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, which were 4.9 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.

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Biden Environmental Agenda Under Fire for Increasing Costs for Americans

The Center Square
President Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s energy policies are increasingly costly for Americans, a newly released report says.

U.S. House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., released the report, which argues Biden’s energy policies have increased costs for Americans and hurt the economy.

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Americans are Getting Poorer While Prices Keep Going Up

Virginia Star Staff
Shopping

Americans’ real weekly earnings dropped sharply in April and still remain well below their level when President Joe Biden first took office, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Real average weekly earnings fell to $1,191.93 in April, declining by 0.4% in the month and 4.8% compared to the start of Biden’s term in January 2021, according to data calculated by the Daily Caller News Foundation from the BLS. Prices have risen over 19% since Biden first took office and 3.4% in the last year, degrading the value of Americans’ wages.

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Independents Have Little Trust, but Pick Trump Over Biden on Economy

The Center Square
Donald Trump

Newly released polling data spells bad news for President Joe Biden this election year.

Gallup released new polling data that showed independent voters trust former President Donald Trump more than Biden when it comes to the economy. About 34 percent of independents say they trust Biden to do the right thing for the economy, compared to 45 percent who trust Trump.

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Commentary: To Appease Environmentalists, the FTC Will Cripple U.S. Energy

RealClearWire
FTC Chair Lina Khan

In the movie The Perfect Storm, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg are among the crew of a boat off the Northeast coast that is caught in the convergence of multiple powerful storms. The combination of tempests ultimately takes down the craft and its crew. We should all hope one of our nation’s most vital industries doesn’t succumb in similar fashion as it is caught in a perfect storm of ideological rigidity, bureaucratic arrogance, and regulatory overreach.

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Government Jobs Continue to Swell Under Biden as Unemployment Ticks Up

Virginia Star Staff
Team Work at Office

The U.S. set another new record for the total number of government jobs in February, even as overall unemployment ticks up, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The government added 52,000 positions in February, around the average gain per month seen in the last year, totaling 23,180,000, according to the BLS. The U.S. economy added 275,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in February, far higher than expectations of 200,000, but unemployment shot up from 3.7% to 3.9%.

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‘Serious Problems’: Global Plague of Recessions Could Infect U.S., Experts Say

Virginia Star Staff
Office Meeting

The recessions currently plaguing several major countries around the world could be what drags the U.S. into an economic downturn of its own, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Germany announced on Monday that it fell into a technical recession in the fourth quarter of 2023, after reporting its second month in a row of negative growth, following several other top nations experiencing economic difficulties. While the U.S. has managed to avoid a recession due to its size and diverse industries, foreign economic malaise may drag the U.S. economy down through changes to trade and global inflation that would lead to a loss for American businesses, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Commentary: Red Warning Lights Are Flashing on U.S. Economy as 2024 Rapidly Approaches

Virginia Star Staff

As 2023 is winding down to a close, the U.S. trade in goods deficit with the world is down $101 billion for the first nine months of the year to $802 billion, an 11.2 percent decrease so far, with still three months of data left to collect for the year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Simultaneously, existing home sales measured by the National Association of Realtors are down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.79 million, a 16.7 percent decrease from its Feb. 2023 level of 4.5 million, and are averaging 4.16 million for the past 12 months. Overall, existing home sales are down the past 12 months by almost 32 percent from their 2021 high of 6.12 million. That’s a lot.

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Report: Economic Recession Coming for the U.S.

The Center Square

A new economic analysis of the U.S. economy projects a recession around the corner.

An international nonprofit, The Conference Board, has released its Leading Economic Indicators report, which projects into the next year for the U.S. economy. That analysis, among other things, projects high inflation, high interest rates and declining consumer spending.

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Government Jobs Increasing Under Biden

Virginia Star Staff

A significant portion of the jobs that have been added to the U.S. economy under Biden consists of government jobs and other public sector positions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

As the Daily Caller reports, a total of 327,000 public sector jobs have been added to the economy from January to August of 2023, accounting for 17.4% of all jobs. During the same period of time in 2022, only about 175,000 public sector jobs were added, amounting to just 5% of all jobs. Overall job growth has also been slower in 2023, with a total of 1,884,000 jobs added this year compared to 3,590,000 jobs added during the same period in 2022.

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Commentary: Interest Rates Are Soaring, Raising the Alarm for a Painful Reckoning for America

Virginia Star Staff

Someone with a million dollars of credit card debt probably wouldn’t celebrate if his interest rate skyrocketed. Yet some analysts are touting rising interest rates on America’s trillions of dollars of long-term debt as a good sign for the U.S. economy.

Are they right? Are rising long-term interest rates a good thing? Certainly not for anyone looking to secure a 30-year mortgage at two-decade-high rates. And certainly not for the federal budget. Not when America is sitting on $32.7 trillion in debt.

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Feds Continue Borrowing over $5 Billion Per Day Despite Credit Downgrade

The Center Square

The federal government is borrowing an average of $5.3 billion per day this fiscal year, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday. The new estimate come just days after a top international creditor downgraded the U.S. credit rating.

“The federal budget deficit was $1.6 trillion in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimates – more than twice the shortfall recorded during the same period last year,” CBO said. “Revenues were 10 percent lower and outlays were 10 percent higher from October through July than they were during the same period in fiscal year 2022.”

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U.S. Economy Grows Moderately as GDP Ticks Up

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday morning.

Real GDP increased by 2.0% in the first quarter of 2022 after being revised up from an initial estimate of 1.1%, according to the BEA. Economists expected the GDP would be around 2% in the second quarter of 2023, following high inflation and an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

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U.S. Economy Adds 517,000 Jobs as Unemployment Drops to Lowest Since 1969

The Center Square

The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate dropped to 3.4%, the lowest since May 1969.

By comparison, there were 260,000 jobs added in December 2022 and the 517,000 was the largest increase since 568,000 in July 2022, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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U.S. GDP Ticks Up, but Recession Fears Remain

Admin

The U.S. economy grew modestly in the fourth quarter of 2022, despite signs of weak domestic demand, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Thursday. In the fourth quarter, inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) grew by roughly 2.9%, down slightly from 3.2% in the third quarter, the BEA reported. Recession concerns among economists linger, however, amid fears that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of interest rate hikes — intended to reduce economic demand to slow inflation — will lead to reduced spending and layoffs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Critics Blast Biden After Federal Report Shows Killing Keystone Pipeline Cost Thousands of Jobs

The Center Square

The Biden administration has drawn fire for admitting that killing the Keystone Pipeline cost the U.S. economy thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.

A report from the Department of Energy showed the pipeline would have supported tens of thousands of jobs, though the number is hard to nail down.

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Biden’s Energy Policies Costing U.S. Economy $100 Billion a Year: Study

Just the News

President Biden and senior officials in his administration have repeatedly said this year that the U.S. is near “record levels” of domestic oil and gas production. According to a new study, however, that’s not exactly the case.

The analysis by economists Stephen Moore and Casey Mulligan found that the Biden administration’s policies have caused the U.S. to produce significantly less oil and gas during Biden’s presidency than it would have during a second term for former President Trump — to the detriment of the national economy.

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JPMorgan Stashing Away Hundreds of Millions in Fear of ‘Powerful Forces’ Shaking US Economy

Virginia Star Staff

JPMorgan Chase stashed away hundreds of millions of dollars in cash amid growing fears that the U.S. economy will enter a recession, The Wall Street Journal reported.

JPMorgan Chase put aside $900 million in cash in preparation for an economic downturn, The Wall Street Journal reported. JPMorgan chief executive officer Jamie Dimon has increasingly warned that the Federal Reserve has been behind the curve fighting inflation and their efforts will bring the U.S. economy into a recession around the fourth quarter of 2022.

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U.S. Trade Deficit Reached Record High in 2021 as Imports Surged

Virginia Star Staff
Several cargo boxes on a ship in the ocean

The U.S. trade deficit continued to grow in December as the import-export gap widened to record highs in 2021, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

The trade deficit grew by 1.8% in December 2021 to $80.7 billion, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday, $1.4 billion above the revised figure from November 2021.

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25 States Urge Biden to Rescind Fed Nominee over ‘Radical’ Climate, Social Views

Virginia Star Staff

A large coalition of state financial officers announced their opposition to one of President Joe Biden’s top nominees for the Federal Reserve over her “radical” policy positions.

Sarah Bloom Raskin would put U.S. financial and economic stability at risk to achieve her “preferred social outcomes” if confirmed, the top financial officers of 25 states wrote to Biden in a letter Monday. Raskin, the former deputy secretary of the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, has taken particular aim at addressing climate change through aggressive financial policies.

“As State Treasurers, Auditors, and financial officers, we write to express our strong disapproval of Sarah Bloom Raskin as your choice for Vice-Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank. We urge you to withdraw her nomination,” the letter stated.

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Commentary: 2022 Won’t Be More of the Same

Virginia Star Staff

End of the year reviews, along with predictions for the coming year, are a staple around this time. But, as Yogi Berra wisely said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

I took a look at what I wrote last year, and a lot of it held up reasonably well (You can be the judge). I argued that the system and its managers are not doing a great job, the coronavirus crisis exposed their incompetence and malevolence, and that bad economics and crime would be major factors in marring the year ahead. Specifically, “a crisis of authority and legitimacy is emerging from failures in the most fundamental tasks of a society: the provision for basic needs, physical security, and a fair and accepted means of making decisions and picking leaders.”

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U.S. Economic Growth Slowed to Two Percent in Third Quarter as Supply Chain Worsens

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. economy grew at a 2% rate in the third quarter of 2021 as supply chain issues and the delta variant slowed gains.

The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of net services and goods produced, grew at a 2% rate during the third quarter of 2021, the slowest gain of the pandemic era, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday.

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Federal Reserve Begins Taking Steps to Fight Growing Inflation

Virginia Star Staff

The Federal Reserve said in September that it would begin taking steps to combat growing inflation in the U.S. economy, according to notes from a Sept. 21 and Sept. 22 Open Market Committee meeting first obtained by The Wall Street Journal. 

The Federal Reserve will be scaling back its $120 billion monthly purchases of U.S. Treasury and mortgage securities due to the growing surge in inflation and strong consumer spending leading to heightened demand, according to minutes from a September meeting released Wednesday by the WSJ. The reduction in spending, commonly referred to as tapering, will begin in mid-November, and experts believe it could end by June, according to the meeting notes.

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GDP Surges 6.5 Percent as Economy Reaches Pre-Pandemic Size

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. economy surged 6.5% in the second quarter of 2021 as states continued to end coronavirus-related restrictions that triggered an economic recession last year.

The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of net services and goods produced, jumped at a 6.5% annual rate between April and May, according to a Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report released Thursday. GDP plummeted 31.4% in the second quarter of 2020 amid the massive nationwide economic shutdowns that occurred during the first coronavirus outbreak.

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U.S. Added 379,000 Jobs in February, Unemployment Rate Fell to 6.2 Percent

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. economy reported an increase of 379,000 jobs in February while the unemployment rate fell to 6.2%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.

Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 379,000 in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, and the number of unemployed persons fell slightly to 10 million. Economists projected 210,000 Americans to be added to payrolls and the unemployment rate to increase to hold at 6.3% prior to Friday’s report, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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