WASHINGTON: The US economy grew faster than originally thought in the second quarter of this year, with Commerce Department figures released Thursday showing a 1.4 percent annual rate.
The Commerce Department’s previous second-quarter GDP estimate had been a gloomier 1.1 percent. Thursday’s figures however surpassed an analyst consensus, which had called for a revision to 1.3 percent.
Job markets also showed signs of continued strength as the US Labor Department reported Thursday that unemployment claims remained low in the week ending September 24, coming in at 254,000.
In releasing the new numbers, which are derived from a fuller set of data than that used in prior estimates, the Commerce Department said the general picture of US growth in the quarter remained the same.
Jim O’Sullivan, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics, said the second quarter revisions were fairly minor and that the growth in the quarter still looked weak. “The available data are signaling a pickup” in the third quarter, he said in a client note.
The most notable change between the second and third estimates was that businesses’ fixed investments increased instead of decreasing, as they had in July’s estimate, the department said in a statement.
Personal consumption and exports also helped drive the results in the second quarter, it said. These gains were partly offset by drops in state and local government spending as well as spending on homes.
Along with the health of labor markets this year, the pace of economic growth has been a key factor in monetary policymakers’ deliberations on setting interest rates, which are at historically low levels after having been raised for the first time in a decade in December.
