LeeCoppock.com
Econ News You Can Use
Category: Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply
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Today, the BEA released their first (Advance) GDP estimate for the second quarter of 2015, estimating real GDP growth of 2.3%. These figures will be revised over the next few months, but for now, they indicate positive but pedestrian growth below the long-run historical average of 3%. The graph below shows quarterly real GDP growth…
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Real GDP in the U.S. fell by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2015, according to the latest report from the BEA. The graph below shows growth by quarters since the beginning of 2005. It seems reasonable to ask: what is wrong with the first quarter? After all, since 2010, there have only been three…
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The unemployment rate in remained steady at 5.5% in March. The graph below shows the steady decline over the past year, falling from 6.6% one year ago. The number of long-term unemployed also stayed constant in March. However, this number decreased by 1.1 million over the past year. Jobs growth did slow in March, with…
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In September, Eurostat waved a magic wand and increased the GDP in the European Union by 3.53 percent overnight. That is a full year's worth of very solid growth. But it didn't make Europeans any wealthier because it was actually just due to a new definition of the way GDP is counted. Eurostat (the economic…
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This morning, the BLS released the Employment Situation report for October and the news is very good. The unemployment rate is now back to 5.8% for the first time since July 2008. In addition, there were 214,000 new jobs added in October. The economy has added more thatn 200,000 jobs per month for nine straight months…
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Real GDP grew 3.5% in the third quarter, according to the advance estimate released by the BEA. A big piece of the growth came from net exports (exports minus imports). Exports rose by 7.8% and imports fell by 2.4%. Since net exports makes up a very small piece of total GDP, this contributed 1.3%…
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The BEA now estimates that real GDP grew by 4.6% in the second quarter. This revision means that the most recent quarter saw the fastest real GDP growth since 2006. That's a long time. Before we get too excited, let's remember that this comes on the heels of negative growth in the first quarter. The…
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I'll post more on this later, but I wanted to point out that the new GDP report is available. It shows that the first quarter of 2014 was particularly weak, with growth of just 0.1%. Remember, this is the first estimate and these have recently been adjusted upward. Even so, nobody expected such a weak report.…
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Today's jobs report brought mixed news. On the one hand, 113,000 new jobs were added to the economy in January. On the other hand, the unemployment rate continued its decline, falling to 6.6 percent. For perspective, note that just one year ago the unemployment rate was 7.9 percent. One other piece of good news –…
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Real GDP grew at 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to the first estimate released by the BEA this week. This news is decidedly… not terrible. You could spin it to be good news or just mediocre news. But, assuming the estimate doesn't change much in subsequent revisions, we've now had two solid quarters…
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