US economy contracts again, fueling recession fears

The US economy shrank again in the second quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.

Gross domestic product, a wide-ranging measure of economic activity, fell by 0.9% on an annualized basis from April through June. That decline marks a key symbolic threshold for the most commonly used — albeit unofficial — definition of a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

The hotly anticipated data release has taken on outsized significance as investors, policymakers and ordinary Americans seek some measure of clarity in the current muddled economic environment.

Although Thursday's initial estimate marked a sharp drop from the 6.7% expansion the economy underwent in the second quarter of 2021, the White House has been adamant that the world's largest economy, despite being buffeted by decades-high inflation and a cascade of supply shocks, remains fundamentally sound.