gross domestic project registers another gain, notes new government report

The nation’s Gross Domestic Product, a broad measurement of the country’s larger economic activity, witnessed a 2.2 percent increase during the final three months of last year.

That increase, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was fueled by strong growth numbers in some fifteen separate industry groups.

But while the nation’s construction industry had seen a modest 2.9 percent increase in its value during the summer and fall of 2018, it saw a lower 2.1 percent at the end of the year.

Larger late 2018 gains were posted by the mining industry, with a significant 38 percent increase in real value during the final three months of last year; and in information services, which include internet publishing, broadcasting, and telecommunications, up by just under 9 percent.

For the entire year, the Gross Domestic Product was up by 3.2 percent, which analysts say is evidence that the U.S. economy has remained buoyant even in the midst of reports of a national economic slowdown.

In fact, note those same analysts, the current economic expansion is to date the second-longest lasting in U.S. history, surpassed only by the unprecedented boom of March 1991 to March 2001.

In real dollars, the Gross Domestic Product for the nation’s construction industry stood at $642 billion during the final quarter of 2018. That was a decrease of $4 billion from the third quarter 2018 numbers of $646 billion.

Despite that decline, the construction industry’s historic Gross Domestic Product trend has been mostly on the upside in the last two years, increasing from $619 billion in mid-2017 to an average of around $643 billion in the last year.

The all-time recorded high for the industry was recorded in the first quarter of 2005 at $794 billion.

By Garry Boulard

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