Second-quarter real gross domestic product expanded 1.3% at an annual rate in the third estimate, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The figure was revised up 0.3 percentage points from the second estimate in August, bringing it back to the the first estimate.
The principal reasons for the increase primarily reflected upward revisions to personal consumption expenditures, a downward revision to imports — a subtraction in the GDP calculation — and an upward revision to exports, according to the report.
Consumer spending rose 0.7%, up 0.3 percentage points from the previous estimate last month. The core PCE price index excluding food and energy was 2.3%. Economists polled by Thomson Reuters expected GDP to be revised to 1.2 % and for the core PCE price index to be 2.2%, according to the median estimate
Exports rose 3.6%, making them half a percentage point higher than the August estimate. Imports rose 1.4%, half a point lower than the previous estimate. Business fixed investment rose 10.3% in the second quarter, revised up 0.4 points. Investment in structures was up 22.6% in the quarter, up 6.9 percentage points from the last estimate, and the biggest increase since a 24.3% jump in the 3Q of 2007.
Inventory investment was $39.1 billion in the current quarter, down from $49.1 billion in the first quarter. Corporate profits in the second quarter, revised from August, rose to $61.2 billion, or 3.3% from the previous quarter, down from a 3.0% estimate in the last report. Government spending fell 0.9% with a 7.6% decline in federal non-military spending and the continuing contraction of state and local spending, which fell 2.8%.
