The Labor Department is reporting substantial growth in personal incomes across the third quarter of this year, having now updated their initial reporting of the growth seen here to reflect even higher rates.
Driven “primarily” by “increases in compensation (led by private wages and salaries), nonfarm proprietors’ income, and personal interest income,” the Labor Department says the category of current-dollar personal income grew $218.3 billion in the three-month period ending with the close of September. And disposable personal income posted an evidently quarter-to-quarter growth rate of 2.9 percent in the same period, with both the numbers now being reported higher than initial third quarter estimates. The figures could, foundationally, represent a boost for consumers against inflation, which in October was zero on an overall, month-to-month level, according to the same federal department.
The Biden administration has been involved in extensive jobs development focused in areas like technology manufacturing, green energy, and infrastructure, and unemployment rates remain low. The most recent updates from the Labor Department also estimated GDP growth in the third quarter to have reached a 5.2 percent rate if extrapolated to an annual basis, adding several tenths of a percentage point to the previously reported estimate. It’s among the highest single-quarter rates in years and comes well after some of the initial recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, to which some have tried to credit early economic successes under the Biden administration as though a bounce back was a sure thing. Other economies in large countries have fared at times more poorly.
All of this rebuffs the continuing narrative from Trump and the Right of some kind of growing desolation of U.S. society with Democrats in power. The leading Republican presidential candidate’s proposed path forward is… dubious. Recently on Truth Social, he’s been somehow complaining again about the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare — something Republicans have yet to be able to undo, despite obsessive attempts. “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump posted Wednesday.
