Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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I was going to ignore Robert Samuelson’s column this week, but then I realized he said the economy was “roaring,” not “snoring.” GDP growth for the second quarter was 2.2 percent. That’s okay, but given our long-term average is close to 3.0 percent, that hardly fits the definition of “roaring.”
We did create a lot of jobs last month, as we have for the last several years, but strong job growth in the face of mediocre GDP growth means that productivity growth is weak. That’s not exactly a positive for the economy.