The Commerce Department’s second swipe at US GDP—it makes three attempts at estimates for the quarter —for the three months that ended in September showed the world’s largest economy chugging along at a faster clip that first thought. The number arrived at a 2.7% annualy pace for the third quarter. (Today’s number is the bar at far right in the chart above.)
That’s better than the first take on the Q3 number, which showed the economy growing at a 2% annual pace, but it’s slightly less than the 2.8% that economists had expected. Wall Street analysts were less than thrilled with the number: “The details of the revision were less encouraging, as consumer spending and disposable personal income were revised down, while business inventories accumulated at a higher rate,” wrote analysts at Goldman Sachs.