Slow Economic Growth Reported for the Third Quarter of 2021

Nationwide supply-chain disruptions, high cost of living, and unemployment rates are causing a deceleration of economic growth in the third quarter of 2021, according to the NAHB’s Eye on Housing.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell two percentage points below forecasted rates and slowed significantly from its second quarter levels.

According to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.0% in the third quarter of 2021, after a 6.7% increase in the second quarter of 2021. It marked the slowest growth rate since the start of the recovery and was far below NAHB’s forecast of a 4.0% increase.

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter of 2021 reflected increases in personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, and state and local government spending. Meanwhile, the increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and decreases in residential fixed investment, federal government spending, and exports had negative contributions to economic growth in the third quarter of 2021.

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