U.S. GDP sees healthy growth

Marketplace

American Public Media

News, Business

4.6 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From July through September, U.S. gross domestic product rose 4.3%, the highest in two years. At a time when many consumers are feeling economic pressure, higher earners and certain businesses are doing very well — and spending to match it. In this episode, can the impressive rate of growth continue? Plus: Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance alternatives fall short, winter surfing boosts Great Lakes tourism revenue, and holiday spending is up, according to credit card companies.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The shutdown delayed federal data train keeps rolling.
0:05.5	Today's delivery, GDP.
0:08.4	From American Public Media.
0:10.6	This is Marketplace.
0:17.0	In Denver, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rizzdahl. It's Tuesday, December 23rd. Good to have you with us.
0:26.9	The U.S. economy grew at a robust clip in the third quarter. From July to September, GDP grew by an annualized 4.3%.
0:36.7	That's according to a delayed initial estimate from the Bureau of
0:40.8	Economic Analysis, more hangover from the federal shutdown. And though that figure will go through
0:47.2	revision before its final, it's the highest quarterly number in two years, boosted mostly by
0:53.2	consumer spending. But GDP data has been a bit
0:56.9	noisy all year, as the Trump administration's tariff policies have made for big swings in
1:02.7	imports and exports, marketplaces Henry Epp dug into the details.
1:08.2	There's one number deep in the GDP report that a lot of economists like to look at
1:12.0	to get a real sense of how the economy is doing. So this is the real final sales to private domestic
1:17.4	purchasers, which is a mouthful. Shannon Grine is an economist at Wells Fargo. What this real
1:22.7	final sales number measures is basically just consumer spending and investments made by private companies.
1:29.4	And in the third quarter, this number, real final sales, was up 3%. That's pretty good.
1:35.7	You had this underlying domestic spending that just kind of continued to grow at a pretty
1:40.2	robust clip through Q3. Despite lots of people feeling pretty bad about the economy,
1:45.0	we just keep spending. I sort of think of this as a continuation of a theme in the post-pandemic
1:51.0	world where households are just going to continue to spend until they're somewhat forced not to.
1:56.9	Some people are reaching that point, says Michael Pierce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford economics, despite upward momentum in the economy.
	...

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