“Lower-income families are wrestling with slowing wage growth and rising costs of various household goods, like beef, coffee and furniture. Still, even as some major corporations have announced work force reductions, the limited extent of overall layoffs is still buttressing activity. And much of consumption growth has come from spending by affluent and upper middle-class Americans, who have continued paying for travel, recreation, restaurants and other discretionary purchases.”
Shady_Merchant1 on
I certainly believe that number just as i 100% believe the inflation report of 2.7% just ignore that the report only had only 3 categories and used a lot of envelope math
Maybe this number is real but I can’t trust the data being put out
Capital_Historian685 on
Looking at that plastic snowman, I am reminded of a question I’ve had for awhile now. I’m not even sure how to express it, but the concept is, is there an economic term for people buying less stuff, which is stuff that they don’t really need or end up using much. In other words, people buy less because they can’t afford it, but suffer no real decline in living standards.
Part of it could be that the utility might mostly lie in the shopping itself, not the goods. “Retail therapy” or whatever. So people would lose out on that. And while I guess there is some utility in a plastic snowman, the lack of one certainly wouldn’t lower living standards.
(I have a BA in economics, and this certainly isn’t anything I came across)
NX and GDI data is still too prelim to be very useful, BEA are using partial data until January. Exports are very slightly up but still very weak
PCE data is unlikely to be significantly revised as the measurement is near real time. The price indexes do not look good. That suggests a drop in (or at least weak growth of) discretionary spending. Wont know for sure what’s happened here until next October. I suspect the rise in C is not actually new spending.
Fed are not going to have a good time at the next meeting. This really doesn’t support another rate drop (and suggests it might need to be raised) but labor remains soft as hell.
tigz47 on
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the AI investing bubble loop is jacking the GDP numbers where the same (billions of) dollars are being counted multiple times.
bloodontherisers on
These articles are plastered all over this sub today, but here is the general breakdown of what is happening
1. AI spending accounts for roughly half of the increase
2. Defense spending is helping to buoy the economy as well
3. Imports have continued to decrease while exports have increased slightly driving the number higher due to the way this is calculated
4. Inflation is persistent and the bottom half of the country (or more potentially) is still struggling while the affluent are driving consumer spending to a sufficient level to increase GDP.
This last point is one worth looking at a little further. The BEA reported that most of this spending came from healthcare purchases. So it seems likely the a good deal of the affluent spending is coming from older Americans who have benefited the most from the explosion of asset prices while the rest of the country struggles, especially if those Americans aren’t having their parents helping them out.
Edit: a word
americanspirit64 on
This government report published in the NYTimes everyone is repeating is about the upper class 20% of Americans throwing the same Roaring Twenties party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago, during the government shutdown. It is a party to celebrate how well they are doing while the rest of America suffers.
How much of this economic suffering is the fault of the top 20%, sadly almost all of it, as they are the part of the country that controls the economy, with their sorry ass Neoliberal and MAGA policies, while ignoring the youth, the middle class and the old of America. The top 20% is a reflection of the top 20%, and no one else, it is the percentage of who a Robber Baron economy in America cares about, the working class is just there to service them. If you don’t believe that is true, look at the growth of the most repellant police force in US history since Trump has been elected, ICE, which stands for Idiots, Controlling, Everyone. This is the top 20%’s way of controlling the economy. Replacing good paying jobs with AI, getting rid of immigrants they paid badly, giving tax breaks to the wealthy, taxing everyone with tariffs, and leaving the working class crumbs.
This isn’t an actual joke. We as a nation, are actually having real conversations about… America, the Land of the Free, becoming a White Christian Nation, ruled by Neo-Nazi’s who hate foreigners, led by trad housewives.
Respectable and intelligent news organizations talking about our economy growing at a blistering rate, while ignoring that the Federal Reserve Bank is cutting interest rates. They are the most conservative economic Industry in America who control all banks in America, they would never, ever lower interest rates in a blistering economy. It would be like cutting your nose off, because flowers smell good, you would never to do. They are lowering interest rates, because they are making to much money, which is bad for all Americans, especially the poor and middle class.
The headline above is nothing but clickbait, an Ad for CBSN, which I believe stands for the Central Bull-Shit-Network led by a Lesbian member of the top 1%.
jayfeather31 on
Even if these numbers are true, the economy doesn’t exactly feel like it’s roaring at 4.3%. If anything, this just creates a credibility gap and is a further sign of our current K-shaped economy.
BlueAces2002 on
Am I supposed to believe any of the bullshit coming out of our North Korea style govt right now? Everyone I know is worse off this year than last year 100%. This is pure garbage.
EconomistWithaD on
Yes. You can trust the numbers.
They are within the 90% CI for the NY Fed Nowcast (https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/nowcast/#nowcast/2025:Q4), the ATL Fed had estimated 3.0% (so, again, within the CI), and Jason Furman has noted, in the recent past, that GDP is heavily dominated by AI investment.
Nwcray on
So….the Fed needs to stop cutting rates and get ready to take away the punchbowl? That’s what I’m hearing here – runaway GDP growth will reignite inflation, especially since BLS says the labor market is holding.
Trump will be calling for higher rates now, right? Right?
GoSparty5800 on
I have a close family member at the BEA. When I asked him about these numbers, he just shrugged and said whatever. Historically he’s always wanted to get into the weeds, but not now. Based on this interaction and his body language. I wouldn’t put much weight into any data that comes out in this administration.
Jumpy_Childhood7548 on
The numbers coming out of the White House, make China’s look honest-There are at least five factors that cause the gdp estimate to be flawed. A primary one, is a significant portion of the growth was attributed to a sharp drop in imports, which adds to the GDP calculation, and an increase in exports, which some analysts suggest was artificially influenced by the timing of tariff policies and is unlikely to be sustained.
TooLittleSunToday on
The big warehouse store has a decently full parking lot. Usually around this time of year the lot is so full it takes roaming around and sitting, waiting for people to pack their cars and leave. This year, it is easy to find a spot whether on weekdays or weekends.
That is a bit unusual but it is truly unusual to see how light the carts are. Many of the carts have items in the small basket and little more. There are entire lines of this type of shopper at the manned registers which are so fast to get through that it makes no sense to go through self checkout.
This has been the case for awhile. If this is a canary, the Republican coal mine is hazardous to the country’s economic health. No, I do not believe anything coming out of any Republican as the entire party is one big lie-fest and has been for years now. Everyone can see this all of this for themselves.
This also means no more rate cuts. How would any member of the Fed stand behind cutting rates if economic growth is blistering?
TrainingJellyfish643 on
Just seems to confirm that GDP has no value as a metric for anything connected to the real world. As long as the wall street casino is in business gdp is going to be fine, but that doesnt mean jack shit to anyone who isnt already in on it
Murgos- on
Right. Amazing GDP growth and yet Trumps admin won’t release undoctored statistics.
Let me guess all the GDP growth is in the 10 top companies and everything else is down?
perplexedparallax on
You can do a lot with debt. Borrowing and spending is a way to pump up an economy and with a limitless credit card anything is possible. By 2030 five trillion will have been spent on data center buildout. The stealth QE and lowering of rates is throwing dollars at people to spend. When you aren’t worried about tomorrow you can live for today. Those who can’t get this much credit are headed to food banks as the K goes parabolic.
IdahoDuncan on
I’ll be very interested to see what happens to people’s disposable income after the health insurance premium increases coming in Q1 next year.
Spiciest-Panini on
I love this comment section. Kudos to the few people actually talking about what’s driving growth and why it’s not necessarily good, as opposed to the fucking jokers talking about our “North Korean style government.”
Weird report. Definitely not the AI bubble or anything lol
bribrah on
My theory, young millenials and gen Z have basically completely given up on buying a house at this point (evidenced by the housing market being frozen) and are spending all their cash. On the other hand, everyone that bought a house 10+ years ago is probably in the best financial situation of their life right now and of course is spending a lot.
darknus823 on
As mentioned elsewhere, this is well within the 90% confidence interval of the NYFed Nowcast:
Also, how can the government alter the inflation data? Thousands of career economists, who mostly skew Dem, are going to be silent and falsify data?
No!
LargeCry709 on
The save plan came just in time for gen x to receive total loan forgiveness and then gen x turned around and voted red. But of course, millennials get screwed again and now the Trump admin is moving us to 30 year repayment plans. A real kick to millennial shins.
FluffyWuffyy on
Econ 101, how many pillows does one person buy? If you have unlimited money, how many pillows do you buy as one person? Not unlimited? Then we will have a problem…
Xander707 on
Just on its face the numbers don’t make sense.
Look I hate Trump but I’m not wishing the country does poorly because he’s leading it. However it’s very difficult to trust anything the admin puts out since we already know Trump retaliates when the reports are bad and people lose their jobs. That’s a great way to lose all credibility with the public.
Now we are supposed to believe there’s surging growth coinciding with job losses/layoffs, rising unemployment, going along with reports of relatively steady inflation but everyone sees with their eyes and wallets that costs continue to skyrocket?
This whole situation feels cooked up in an underground basement. If it’s what it looks like, this admin won’t be able to lie about the conditions for 3 more years. I just hope the public responds accordingly if we do find out we are being deliberately lied to with purposefully falsified data.
LordTrollsworth on
Posted by CBS news – the new propaganda arm of Bari Weiss. The headline and bias of this article does not fully represent the nuance of the facts.
BoilerMo on
These numbers do not follow a logical pathway or any legit statistical model. All the models showed less than 3% growth. The additional 1.5% is dubious at best, at worst the numbers are pure fiction, like the inflation numbers where they left key inputs like housing.
Lopsided_Bank7069 on
So are they saying now this is Trump’s economy? Are they saying this is the starting point? So if it goes downhill from here its officially on Trump or will they still say its bidens fault?
27 Comments
Buried the lede…
“Lower-income families are wrestling with slowing wage growth and rising costs of various household goods, like beef, coffee and furniture. Still, even as some major corporations have announced work force reductions, the limited extent of overall layoffs is still buttressing activity. And much of consumption growth has come from spending by affluent and upper middle-class Americans, who have continued paying for travel, recreation, restaurants and other discretionary purchases.”
I certainly believe that number just as i 100% believe the inflation report of 2.7% just ignore that the report only had only 3 categories and used a lot of envelope math
Maybe this number is real but I can’t trust the data being put out
Looking at that plastic snowman, I am reminded of a question I’ve had for awhile now. I’m not even sure how to express it, but the concept is, is there an economic term for people buying less stuff, which is stuff that they don’t really need or end up using much. In other words, people buy less because they can’t afford it, but suffer no real decline in living standards.
Part of it could be that the utility might mostly lie in the shopping itself, not the goods. “Retail therapy” or whatever. So people would lose out on that. And while I guess there is some utility in a plastic snowman, the lack of one certainly wouldn’t lower living standards.
(I have a BA in economics, and this certainly isn’t anything I came across)
[https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-3rd-quarter-2025-initial-estimate-and-corporate-profits](https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-3rd-quarter-2025-initial-estimate-and-corporate-profits)
NX and GDI data is still too prelim to be very useful, BEA are using partial data until January. Exports are very slightly up but still very weak
PCE data is unlikely to be significantly revised as the measurement is near real time. The price indexes do not look good. That suggests a drop in (or at least weak growth of) discretionary spending. Wont know for sure what’s happened here until next October. I suspect the rise in C is not actually new spending.
Fed are not going to have a good time at the next meeting. This really doesn’t support another rate drop (and suggests it might need to be raised) but labor remains soft as hell.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the AI investing bubble loop is jacking the GDP numbers where the same (billions of) dollars are being counted multiple times.
These articles are plastered all over this sub today, but here is the general breakdown of what is happening
1. AI spending accounts for roughly half of the increase
2. Defense spending is helping to buoy the economy as well
3. Imports have continued to decrease while exports have increased slightly driving the number higher due to the way this is calculated
4. Inflation is persistent and the bottom half of the country (or more potentially) is still struggling while the affluent are driving consumer spending to a sufficient level to increase GDP.
This last point is one worth looking at a little further. The BEA reported that most of this spending came from healthcare purchases. So it seems likely the a good deal of the affluent spending is coming from older Americans who have benefited the most from the explosion of asset prices while the rest of the country struggles, especially if those Americans aren’t having their parents helping them out.
Edit: a word
This government report published in the NYTimes everyone is repeating is about the upper class 20% of Americans throwing the same Roaring Twenties party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago, during the government shutdown. It is a party to celebrate how well they are doing while the rest of America suffers.
How much of this economic suffering is the fault of the top 20%, sadly almost all of it, as they are the part of the country that controls the economy, with their sorry ass Neoliberal and MAGA policies, while ignoring the youth, the middle class and the old of America. The top 20% is a reflection of the top 20%, and no one else, it is the percentage of who a Robber Baron economy in America cares about, the working class is just there to service them. If you don’t believe that is true, look at the growth of the most repellant police force in US history since Trump has been elected, ICE, which stands for Idiots, Controlling, Everyone. This is the top 20%’s way of controlling the economy. Replacing good paying jobs with AI, getting rid of immigrants they paid badly, giving tax breaks to the wealthy, taxing everyone with tariffs, and leaving the working class crumbs.
This isn’t an actual joke. We as a nation, are actually having real conversations about… America, the Land of the Free, becoming a White Christian Nation, ruled by Neo-Nazi’s who hate foreigners, led by trad housewives.
Respectable and intelligent news organizations talking about our economy growing at a blistering rate, while ignoring that the Federal Reserve Bank is cutting interest rates. They are the most conservative economic Industry in America who control all banks in America, they would never, ever lower interest rates in a blistering economy. It would be like cutting your nose off, because flowers smell good, you would never to do. They are lowering interest rates, because they are making to much money, which is bad for all Americans, especially the poor and middle class.
The headline above is nothing but clickbait, an Ad for CBSN, which I believe stands for the Central Bull-Shit-Network led by a Lesbian member of the top 1%.
Even if these numbers are true, the economy doesn’t exactly feel like it’s roaring at 4.3%. If anything, this just creates a credibility gap and is a further sign of our current K-shaped economy.
Am I supposed to believe any of the bullshit coming out of our North Korea style govt right now? Everyone I know is worse off this year than last year 100%. This is pure garbage.
Yes. You can trust the numbers.
They are within the 90% CI for the NY Fed Nowcast (https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/nowcast/#nowcast/2025:Q4), the ATL Fed had estimated 3.0% (so, again, within the CI), and Jason Furman has noted, in the recent past, that GDP is heavily dominated by AI investment.
So….the Fed needs to stop cutting rates and get ready to take away the punchbowl? That’s what I’m hearing here – runaway GDP growth will reignite inflation, especially since BLS says the labor market is holding.
Trump will be calling for higher rates now, right? Right?
I have a close family member at the BEA. When I asked him about these numbers, he just shrugged and said whatever. Historically he’s always wanted to get into the weeds, but not now. Based on this interaction and his body language. I wouldn’t put much weight into any data that comes out in this administration.
The numbers coming out of the White House, make China’s look honest-There are at least five factors that cause the gdp estimate to be flawed. A primary one, is a significant portion of the growth was attributed to a sharp drop in imports, which adds to the GDP calculation, and an increase in exports, which some analysts suggest was artificially influenced by the timing of tariff policies and is unlikely to be sustained.
The big warehouse store has a decently full parking lot. Usually around this time of year the lot is so full it takes roaming around and sitting, waiting for people to pack their cars and leave. This year, it is easy to find a spot whether on weekdays or weekends.
That is a bit unusual but it is truly unusual to see how light the carts are. Many of the carts have items in the small basket and little more. There are entire lines of this type of shopper at the manned registers which are so fast to get through that it makes no sense to go through self checkout.
This has been the case for awhile. If this is a canary, the Republican coal mine is hazardous to the country’s economic health. No, I do not believe anything coming out of any Republican as the entire party is one big lie-fest and has been for years now. Everyone can see this all of this for themselves.
This also means no more rate cuts. How would any member of the Fed stand behind cutting rates if economic growth is blistering?
Just seems to confirm that GDP has no value as a metric for anything connected to the real world. As long as the wall street casino is in business gdp is going to be fine, but that doesnt mean jack shit to anyone who isnt already in on it
Right. Amazing GDP growth and yet Trumps admin won’t release undoctored statistics.
Let me guess all the GDP growth is in the 10 top companies and everything else is down?
You can do a lot with debt. Borrowing and spending is a way to pump up an economy and with a limitless credit card anything is possible. By 2030 five trillion will have been spent on data center buildout. The stealth QE and lowering of rates is throwing dollars at people to spend. When you aren’t worried about tomorrow you can live for today. Those who can’t get this much credit are headed to food banks as the K goes parabolic.
I’ll be very interested to see what happens to people’s disposable income after the health insurance premium increases coming in Q1 next year.
I love this comment section. Kudos to the few people actually talking about what’s driving growth and why it’s not necessarily good, as opposed to the fucking jokers talking about our “North Korean style government.”
Weird report. Definitely not the AI bubble or anything lol
My theory, young millenials and gen Z have basically completely given up on buying a house at this point (evidenced by the housing market being frozen) and are spending all their cash. On the other hand, everyone that bought a house 10+ years ago is probably in the best financial situation of their life right now and of course is spending a lot.
As mentioned elsewhere, this is well within the 90% confidence interval of the NYFed Nowcast:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/nowcast
Atlanta Fed also estimated 3%. So it’s high, but not abnormally so.
https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
Also, how can the government alter the inflation data? Thousands of career economists, who mostly skew Dem, are going to be silent and falsify data?
No!
The save plan came just in time for gen x to receive total loan forgiveness and then gen x turned around and voted red. But of course, millennials get screwed again and now the Trump admin is moving us to 30 year repayment plans. A real kick to millennial shins.
Econ 101, how many pillows does one person buy? If you have unlimited money, how many pillows do you buy as one person? Not unlimited? Then we will have a problem…
Just on its face the numbers don’t make sense.
Look I hate Trump but I’m not wishing the country does poorly because he’s leading it. However it’s very difficult to trust anything the admin puts out since we already know Trump retaliates when the reports are bad and people lose their jobs. That’s a great way to lose all credibility with the public.
Now we are supposed to believe there’s surging growth coinciding with job losses/layoffs, rising unemployment, going along with reports of relatively steady inflation but everyone sees with their eyes and wallets that costs continue to skyrocket?
This whole situation feels cooked up in an underground basement. If it’s what it looks like, this admin won’t be able to lie about the conditions for 3 more years. I just hope the public responds accordingly if we do find out we are being deliberately lied to with purposefully falsified data.
Posted by CBS news – the new propaganda arm of Bari Weiss. The headline and bias of this article does not fully represent the nuance of the facts.
These numbers do not follow a logical pathway or any legit statistical model. All the models showed less than 3% growth. The additional 1.5% is dubious at best, at worst the numbers are pure fiction, like the inflation numbers where they left key inputs like housing.
So are they saying now this is Trump’s economy? Are they saying this is the starting point? So if it goes downhill from here its officially on Trump or will they still say its bidens fault?