WH Economic Adviser: ‘Expectations Are’ ‘Small to Negative’ Growth in Second Quarter, But ‘We Are Recovering from a Historic Pandemic’

On Monday’s “CNN Newsroom,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey stated that while the White House is “looking for positive growth” in GDP, the “expectations are” that GDP growth in the second quarter of 2022 will “be small to negative.” But “we are recovering from a historic pandemic.” And that “a lot of” the negative growth number in the first quarter was due to inventory changes, “and it remained the case that the consumer was quite strong.”

Boushey said, “Well, certainly, we are looking for positive growth in the second quarter. But expectations are that it will be small to — it’ll be small to negative. But here’s the thing, again, we are recovering from a historic pandemic. What we saw last quarter was that, although growth was negative, a lot of that was due to the change in inventories and it remained the case that the consumer was quite strong. Given the fact that the labor market remains robust, given the fact that we’ve been creating jobs to the tune of about 375,000 per month on average for the past few months, and consumers have remained strong, we’ll have to see what the numbers show.”

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