Happy Day is here, and gone, again. On January 26, 2024, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that real US gross domestic product expanded at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent in 2023’s fourth quarter after the third quarter’s 4.9 percent expansion.
Three point three and four point nine add up, according to some, to a miracle, and an embarrassing one for some of the same political economists who find disaster in every wage increase, any public health expenditure.
The US Secretary of Commerce couldn’t get the words out fast enough: ”It’s Bidenomics!” proclaimed Gina Raimondo, former venture capitalist, former governor, former chairperson of Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign. ”Manufacturing is booming.”
Could it be? Was Keynesianism saved by a pandemic? Was JRB a second-coming of FDR, or maybe just 2/3 of a second-coming, an FD, since he hadn’t mobilized the economy for all-out war? Yet.
The ideologues of the ideology that is political economy welcomed the chance to wonder or worry or both about the “extremely positive” numbers. Better that than trying to explain the US Federal Reserve’s January statistical release.
Better that than trying to explain how for 2023 industrial production grew only 1 percent and was barely above the 2017 mark.
Better that than trying to explain that manufacturing was still below the 2017 mark.
Better that than trying to explain that capacity utilization for total industry was below the utilization rate peak of 1988-1989 or 1994-1995.
Better that than trying to explain manufacturing levels, capacity, and capacity utilization were still below the marks established in 2007.
Better that than trying to explain how the annual rates of growth of industrial and manufacturing capacity for years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 were below the average rates for the period 1972-1979;
And 1980-1988;
And 1989-1994;
And 1995-…..you get the idea.
Better to check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics news release on productivity and costs where political economists could take pleasure in learning that nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased 3.2 percent in 2023’s fourth quarter as long as you didn’t read too far and stumble upon “manufacturing sector labor productivity increased 2.3 percent in the fourth quarters of 2023, as output decreased 2.4 percent and hours worked decreased 4.6 percent.”
Or “manufacturing sector labor productivity has increased at an annual rate of 0.2 percent during the current business cycle, which began in the fourth quarter of 2019. This rate reflects a 0.1 percent growth rate for output and a 0.2 percent rate of decline for hours worked.”
That’s what counts as good news these days, output decreased more slowly than the reduction in hours worked. So avoid reading this: “This slow productivity growth rate follows the 0.0 percent annual rate of growth during the last business cycle that spanned the fourth quarter 2007 through the fourth quarter 2019, and is below the long term rate since the first quarter of 1987 of 2.1 percent.”
As a matter of fact, if I were a political economist, I’d quit reading altogether.
The 1980s were called the lost decade for Latin America. So far, we’re up to a lost decade and a half.
S.Artesian
February 12, 2024
anticapital0.wordpress.com 
good article. Just been pouring over volumes of sales by the largest US consumer facing corporations. Two things stand out. Volumes are negative for the quarter and the year. And, North American volumes in most cases are well below international volumes, and yet US GDP growth is outstanding. Of course there are areas of growth like travel and hospitality but they are too small to make up the shortfall. The GDP figures are quite clearly inflated.
Indeed.. US QFR reports for the 12 months ending in the 3Q 2023, sales declined 5 percent, and imports are a negative in GDP calculations, so the “fuel” driving GDP is highly problematic and is skewed probably because of tremendous inventory expansion.
SA