WASHINGTON: The US economy grew faster than originally thought in the second quarter of this year, with Commerce Department figures released Thursday showing a 1.4 percent annual rate.
The previous estimate had been a gloomier 1.1 percent. Thursday's figures surpassed an analyst consensus, which had called for a revision to 1.3 percent.
In releasing the new numbers, which are derived from a fuller set of data than that used in prior estimates, the Commerce Department said the general picture of US growth in the quarter remained the same.
"The most notable change from the second to third estimate is that nonresidential fixed investment increased in the second quarter," the department said in a statement, noting that in July's estimate it had decreased.
"The increase in real GDP in the second quarter reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures, exports and nonresidential fixed investment."
Along with the health of labor markets, this year, the pace of economic growth has been a key factor in monetary policymakers' deliberations on setting interest rates, which are at historically low levels after having been raised for the first time in a decade in December.
Taken together with an anemic 1.1 percent growth rate in the first quarter, initial estimates for the second quarter had painted a downcast portrait of the first half of 2016, stoking nervousness about the health of the US economy.
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