Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at an inflation- and seasonally adjusted 2.9% annual rate in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. That was stronger growth than the second quarter’s pace of 1.4%. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected growth at a 2.5% pace for the July-to-September period.
The Labor Department on Tuesday said that consumer prices rose by 0.3% in September from August, putting them 1.5% above their year-earlier level. With gasoline prices stabilizing, annual inflation ought to push above 2% on the year within a couple of months.
“Sales at retail stores, online retailers and restaurants rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% in September from the prior month, matching economists’ expectations for a rebound after sales fell 0.2% in August, the Commerce Department reported Friday. Stronger auto sales and rising gasoline prices boosted the headline figure last month, and spending excluding gas and autos rose a more modest 0.3%, though that was still the best gain in three months.”
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits were unchanged at a seasonally adjusted 246,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell 3,500 to 249,250.
The labor market was showing few signs of acceleration and few signs of deterioration in August, according to the Labor Department’s monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as Jolts. . . The drop can be largely attributed to a decline in openings for professional and business services, which saw the number of available jobs fall by 223,000 to 989,000.
Gross domestic product expanded at a 1.4 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday in its third estimate of GDP. That was up from the 1.1 percent rate it reported last month and higher than analysts’ expectations.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 254,000 in the week ended Sept. 24, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Both the formation of firms (for example, McDonald’s as a whole) and establishments (an individual McDonald’s restaurant), have dropped off precipitously since the financial crisis and remained low.
A gauge of U.S. business prices was flat last month, a sign of continued mild inflationary pressures as Federal Reserve officials debate whether to raise short-term interest rates.
The consumer-price index, which measures what Americans pay for everything from car repairs to potatoes, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in May from the prior month, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the third straight monthly rise in overall prices as the damping effects of low oil prices and a strong dollar faded.
California ranked last among the 50 states in per capita manufacturing investments in 2015, attracting only 1.5 percent of investments made in the US, according to data analyzed and released this week by the California Manufacturers & Technology Association (CMTA).
Seven metro areas had an unemployment rate of 10% or higher in April . . . Five of those seven areas are in California. El Centro, Calif., led all metro areas in the U.S. with a 20.1% jobless rate in April. It was followed by Yuma, Ariz.; Merced, Calif.; Ocean City, N.J.; Visalia-Porterville, Calif.; Bakersfield, Calif.; and Hanford-Corcoran, Calif.
Consumer spending rose 1 percent last month after a flat reading in March, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Incomes were up a solid 0.4 percent, matching the March gain. Wages and salaries, the most important component of incomes, gained 0.5 percent.
The broader economy seems on track to rebound after a weak performance over the past few quarters. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced across the U.S. economy, expanded at a 0.8% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first three months of 2016, the Commerce Department said in updated figures out Friday. That was up from an initial estimate of 0.5% growth but still represented a deceleration from the fourth quarter’s 1.4% growth rate.
We’re supposedly living in the age of startups when people can create new businesses, enrich themselves, and employ their fellow Americans. That narrative, like much economic optimism these days, is now mostly a tale for coastal cities, and a tenuous one at best. . . Fewer new businesses were created in the last five years in the US than any period since at least 1980 . . . Businesses that did form are also far more concentrated than ever before: just 20 counties accounted for half of the country’s total new businesses. All of them were in large metro areas.