U.S. economy grows by 4.3% in third quarter, much more than expected, delayed report shows

[mathematic]

18. This has been a hard year for econ statistics due to massive policy changes.

Tariffs, kicking out so many immigrants we might actually get workforce population declines, the 45 day shutdown, and of course, the downsizing of the departments that actually produce these reports have all contributed to increased uncertainty and variability in the data.

That said, people are terrible at identifying when we're in a recession. There are people everywhere that say we're in a recession whenever the party they voted for doesn't hold the Presidency. There are permabears that have called "15 of the last 2 recessions". There are people on DU that have said we've been in a recession for most of the last 25 years. There are mainstream economic commentators and forecasters that insisted we were going to enter a recession for some reason or another. (The Sahm rule in '24. The laughable contention that the Fed was raising rates "too fast" in '22. And so on.) Nevertheless, the US economy, which is bigger than any one man, keeps on.