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Workers in Miami: Exports rose sharply in the summer
Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images
A few days before the election, US President Donald Trump is getting a tailwind from new economic figures.
After the corona-related slump in spring, the US economy picked up again in summer.
The gross domestic product (GDP) rose from July to September on an annualized basis by 33.1 percent, as the Department of Commerce in Washington announced on Thursday.
A record pace.
Even experts had not expected such strong growth - despite the sharp slump in spring.
The calculation method used by US statisticians differs greatly from that used to measure German economic growth.
The US calculates how much economic output would increase if growth continued for a year.
Compared to the previous quarter, economic output increased by 7.4 percent.
This value can be compared more with the figures from Germany.
In the summer, consumption proved to be the engine of the upswing.
Projected over the year, it increased by 40.7 percent.
In the spring, because of the contact restrictions and rising unemployment, a minus of 33.2 percent was recorded.
Exports and investments also increased strongly.
Even if there were signs of an economic improvement in the summer: The corona pandemic is far from over in the USA, the number of infected people there continues to rise sharply.
Since it began, almost 8.9 million of the 330 million Americans have been infected with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen.
The death toll after infection is more than 227,000.
The fear of another setback for the economy is increasing accordingly.
This also recently affected Wall Street.
Unemployment rate at ten or eleven percent
The situation on the labor market also shows that the country's economy is currently not healthy.
In the week up to October 24, the number of initial applications was 751,000, around 40,000 fewer than in the previous week, as the Ministry of Labor announced.
The new applications reflect the short-term development of the labor market in the world's largest economy.
Immediately before the corona pandemic, the number was usually around 200,000 per week.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.9 percent in September.
The October dates won't be released until the end of next week.
However, the unemployment rate does not include all people who currently do not have a job and would like to work.
The Federal Reserve therefore assumes that the real unemployment rate is currently closer to ten or eleven percent.
According to the Ministry of Labor, 22.6 million people received some form of unemployment benefit in the week ending October 10.
A year earlier there were only 1.4 million people in the same week.
Before the worsening pandemic in March, the unemployment rate was a low 3.5 percent.
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yes / Reuters / dpa
