U.S. GDP Increased 3.4% in Third Quarter

Those frustrations are grounded in reality. Consumer prices were up 3.5 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, driven in part by high gas prices that are the direct result of Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. Americans are increasingly dipping into their savings to keep up with rising costs. Households, in the aggregate, saved just 4.1 percent of their after-tax income in the third quarter, the lowest rate in nearly four years. After-tax income, adjusted for inflation, rose in the third quarter as a whole but fell in September.

“The data on the economy are something to celebrate, but they look better on paper than they feel to most Americans,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist for KPMG, the accounting firm. And while the strength in the economy is real, she said, it is unequally distributed: Wealthy households are benefiting from growing stock portfolios, while wages, adjusted for inflation, have fallen over the past year.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/business/economy/us-economy-gdp.html