With the US economy slowing but still growing and inflation down as the Federal Reserve prepares to lower interest rates, the US appears to have dodged a recession, National Retail Federation (NRF) Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. economy is clearly not in a recession nor is it likely to head into a recession in the home stretch of 2024,\u201d Kleinhenz said. \u201cInstead, it appears that the economy is on the cusp of nailing a long-awaited soft landing with a simultaneous cooling of growth and inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite an \u201ceventful August\u201d with initial reports of rising unemployment and a slowdown in manufacturing, more recent data has \u201ccalmed fears of a deteriorating U.S. economy,\u201d Kleinhenz said. \u201cConcerns are now focused on the direction of the labour market and the possibility of a job market slowdown, but a recession is far less likely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kleinhenz\u2019s comments came in the September issue of NRF\u2019s Monthly Economic Review<\/em>, which said annualised gross domestic product growth for the second quarter has been revised upward to 3% from the original report of 2.8%. Consumer spending, the largest component of GDP, was revised up to 2.9% growth for the quarter from 2.3%. Spending has moderated this year after accelerating in the second half of 2023 but \u201cthe American consumer has been resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n Year-over-year growth in the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index \u2013 the Fed\u2019s preferred measure of inflation \u2013 was at 2.5% in July, unchanged from June and only half a percentage point above the Fed\u2019s target of 2%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the US economy slowing but still growing and inflation down as the Federal Reserve prepares to lower interest rates, the US appears to have dodged a recession, National Retail Federation (NRF) Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. \u201cThe U.S. economy is clearly not in a recession nor is it likely to head into a recession…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-27696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bulletin"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n