Real World Economics: GDP is important, but must be kept in context

Edward Lotterman The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis last week released its “advance estimate” of U.S. Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter of 2025. GDP measures the total market value of all final goods and services produced in the country over a period of time and is one of the key indicators of how an economy is performing. Despite acknowledged one-off data anomalies, it showed a very slight decline from the start of the year. This is not good news,