Growth of economic output by the broadest measure improved in the second quarter compared with the first. But why don't many Americans feel better?
Today’s Commerce Department report showing gross domestic product grew 2.3 percent in the second quarter is certainly an improvement over the revised 0.6 percent rate of the first quarter. But it fits into the 2.2 percent average that the economy has grown since the end of the recession in 2009.
We haven’t seen such a weak expansion since modern record-keeping began in 1948.
Slicing the data by year-over-year growth by percent is especially instructive.