The U.S. Economy Slows: 4 Key Points 4-30-25

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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is the U.S. economy slows four key points. So here's the deal with the U.S. economy in the first quarter and a couple of key points on it. First, GDP, gross domestic product, dropped by 0.3%. That's not 3%, that's 0.3%. But that's still a big drop in the first contraction in a few years.

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This is down, our second point is, this is down from 2.4% growth in the fourth quarter of 2024. Third, inflation eased in April, but was still ran pretty hot for the first quarter, but eased in April. Finally, fourth, there was a very small gain in jobs in April. Private payrolls added about 62,000 jobs. And when you combine that with government hiring slowing,

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that leads to concerns about the strength of the growth economy from where it was at. So a few things are happening. One, the market is down today as they try and digest it.

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Second, the Fed is going to have a hard time trying to figure out whether the concern is a slowing economy or inflation and also doesn't want to be pushed around by President Trump, although I'm not really sure that that comes into play in Chairman Powell's view of the world. He really worries about inflation and the strength of the economy.

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Now, the final thing is, if we're going to have to slow down growth, Let's hope that our deficits start to come down as well. Because running massive deficits and not getting growth, that's horrible. I'm obviously a believer that running massive deficits at any time is a horrible thing. But if you're particularly not getting growth and you have massive deficits, this is a real problem.