US Economy: Lengthening and Strengthening

America’s economy is strengthening.  And this is being matched by its length expansion as well. Indeed in May of this year, “the U.S. economic expansion has become the nation’s second-longest on record.”  A lot of the country’s power is size-related – being one of the world’s largest countries vis-à-vis population.

Since the country is so large, its task of keeping its economy on track – even growing – becomes more challenging.    But it seems to be responding to this situation extremely well.  Just looking at figures for last month we see a creation of 250,00 jobs nationwide.  Growth rates in the 2nd and 3rd quarters this year were 4.2 and 3.5 percent respectively.

Experts are even saying now that if there is still no recession by the end of June, this uptrend will exceed 120 months, outpacing the last huge expansion that occurred in 1991 for two years and breaking the record since 1857!

And then of course this has a cumulative effect worldwide.  Workers outside of America that are manufacturing products sold in America benefit since global growth in general is extremely dependent on US economic cohesion.

According to Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome H. Powell, a lot of this good news is because of the successful work of the Fed.  He said:

“I’m very happy about the state of the economy now. There’s pretty good reason to think we’re going to continue in a positive vein like that. Our policy is part of the reason the economy is in such a good place now. I want to leave on a note of optimism about our economy. We’ve been through a difficult time and we’ve faced difficult times before. We’re in a good place now. I do believe our economy can grow and grow faster.”