US economy expands 2% in September quarter

WASHINGTON: The US economy grew at a lower than expected pace of two per cent in the three-month period ended September 2011, even as consumer spending picked up during the same period.

The world's largest economy, on the recovery path, was earlier projected to have expanded 2.5 per cent in the 2011 September quarter.

"Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the US -- increased at an annual rate of 2 per cent in the third quarter of 2011," the Bureau of Economic Analysis said in a statement today.

The downward revision of growth was mainly on account of lower private inventory investment as well as state and local government spending, the statement said.

However, the latest growth figure is higher than the GDP expansion of 1.3 per cent witnessed in the 2011 June quarter.

Meanwhile, official data showed that consumer spending went up in the September quarter, indicating that the national economy is revving up gradually.

"Real personal consumption expenditures increased 2.3 per cent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 0.7 per cent in the second.

"Durable goods increased 5.5 per cent, in contrast to a decrease of 5.3 per cent. Non-durable goods decreased 0.6 per cent, in contrast to an increase of 0.2 per cent. Services increased 2.9 per cent, compared with an increase of 1.9 per cent," the statement said.

The US is slowly coming back to growth path even as the European debt turmoil threatens to derail the fragile global economy.