schumer. cnn will bring you the president s remarks when they begin. let s start with the new gdp report. with me is matt egan. walk us through the report, the numbers, what you see. so broadly consumers were still spending. it is a slowdown for sure but overall that was a positive contributor to gdp. on the other hand, government spending slowed down. when we look at where consumers are spending, it s an acceleration of what we ve seen. we spent less on physical items. services, however, think airfare, which is why airports are so busy these days, hotels and restaurants, that really accelerated. business spending declined and inventories, which we have been hearing from a lot of retailers for sure but also other companies they are trying to move out their inventory, there has been a mismatch of what they have. that was reflected here, too. i think to put it simply, it is clearly showing a slowdown. matt, this is you ve written a lot about this. this is one of the big i
unusual situation. the problem with calling this a recession, the jobs market is way too hot. unemployment is at 3.6%. that is historically low. it is far cry from the nearly 15% of april 2020. house of repres how do you have a recession when you don t have mass layoffs? some people define it as two straight quarters of negative growth with you that s not how the score keepers define it. they say it s significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy that lasts more than a few months. some economists are predicting positive growth for the third quarter. morgan stanley saying 2% growth in the third quarter. i think if that happens, that may quiet some recession fears. and you confuse us even further. the president s economic adviser brian dees was on with