On Thursday, Heritage economist EJ Antoni announced that in 2022 America’s real disposable income had plummeted to its lowest level since Great Depression in 1932.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis issued a report which revealed that real disposable personal income had plummeted to an alarming rate of -6.4%. Antino reports that this decrease caused Americans to lose over one trillion dollars in 2022.
Antoni declared that the recently released U.S. GDP and consumer spending data demonstrated that Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s final GDP projections were unduly optimistic. He noted that the 2022 real GDP of 2.1% was the most sluggish growth rate in six years, apart from 2020 and 2021’s pandemic-impacted numbers.
Tweeting, Antoni said, “The gain from net exports is not a good sign: both imports and exports are falling, imports are just falling faster; international trade slowdown is not a sign of wealth for Americans.”
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), there was a surge in real GDP growth in 2022, mainly resulting from four things: private inventory investments, boosts in consumer spending (1.42%), net exports (.56%), and private inventory investments
According to the BEA, what offset the increases were residential fixed investment which dropped by 26.7%, and fourth-quarter state and local government spending. “Homeownership affordability [is] at [its] lowest point since it began being measured,” Antoni said, because the “consumer can’t afford both high home prices and high borrowing costs.”
BEA data shows that real GDP growth for Q4 2022 was, after a 3.2% rise in Q3, recorded at an annual rate of approximately 2.9%.
Alfredo Ortiz, President of Job Creators Network, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Q4’s modest growth will do little to allay small businesses deepening financial worries, saying “the war on elevated inflation and meager economic growth is far from won.”