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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Feds Say Economic Growth Slower Than Predicted in 1Q

The U.S. economy grew at an even more lackluster pace in the first quarter of the year than originally believed, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

(CN) - The U.S. economy grew at an even more lackluster pace in the first quarter of the year than originally believed, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

In its latest assessment of the quarter, the department's statisticians said the nation's gross domestic product grew only by only 2 percent between January and March, down from an already paltry estimate of 2.2 percent.

The Commerce Department said its latest estimate of the nation's economic growth is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month.

The department says the deceleration in real economic growth in the first quarter was due to a number of factors, including declines in exports, state and local government spending, and federal government spending and a downturn in residential fixed investment.

It says these conditions were only partially offset by a small decrease in private inventory investment

and a larger increase in nonresidential fixed investment.

Imports, which are a subtracted in the calculation of gross domestic product, also decelerated.

In the meantime, the department said, real gross domestic income  increased 3.6 percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.0 percent in the final quarter of 2017.

Categories / Business, Consumers, Economy, Government, National

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