The US economy was producing $32.6 trillion of goods and services a year in the second quarter of 2026. That is an annual rate: the pace of one quarter, scaled up to a full year. The total is the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Consumer spending made up 67.5% of it.
GDP is the standard measure of the size of an economy. Its growth rate shows whether the economy is expanding or shrinking. This guide shows how GDP is calculated. It explains how GDP changes once rising prices are stripped out. It also covers what the number leaves out. The figures come from the BEA's release of 30 September 2026.
What is GDP? Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the market value of all the final goods and services produced inside a country over a period. It measures the size of an economy.
GDP adds up consumer spending, investment, government spending and exports, minus imports. Consumer spending was 67.5% of US GDP in the second quarter of 2026.
Real GDP strips out rising prices, so it tracks the volume of output. It grew at an annual rate of 2.2% in the second quarter of 2026. Before stripping out prices, GDP grew at an annual rate of 8.5%.
GDP leaves out unpaid work at home, such as cooking and childcare. The BEA also keeps a wider measure that adds unpaid work in. On that measure, unpaid work was 16% of the total in 2024.
What is GDP?
GDP counts what is produced inside a country's borders, whoever owns the business. A factory in Ohio owned by a foreign company counts in US GDP. A US company's factory abroad does not.
It counts only final goods and services, so nothing is counted twice. The BEA's own example is a loaf of bread:
A farmer grows wheat and sells it for $1.
A miller turns the wheat into flour and sells it for $3.
A baker turns the flour into bread and sells it for $7.
GDP rises by $7, the price of the bread. Adding up all three sales would give $11, which counts the wheat three times and the flour twice.
How GDP is calculated: the four components
The BEA mainly adds up spending on final goods and services. The textbook formula is GDP = C + I + G + (X − M):
C, consumer spending: what households buy, from groceries and rent to healthcare.
I, investment: business spending on buildings, equipment and software, plus new homes and changes in the stock of unsold goods.
G, government spending: what federal, state and local governments spend on goods, services and public investment. We cover government budgets in What Is Fiscal Policy?
X − M, net exports: exports minus imports. Imports are subtracted because the spending in C, I and G already includes goods made abroad.
The BEA also measures GDP in two other ways. One adds up the incomes earned in production, called Gross Domestic Income (GDI). The other adds up the value each industry adds. In principle, all three give the same total. In practice they use different source data, so they differ a little.
US GDP by component, second quarter of 2026
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; YX Insights
The chart shows each part as a share of GDP. Consumer spending ran at $22.0 trillion a year, or 67.5% of GDP. Investment was 17.9% and government spending 17.3%.
Exports were 11.7% of GDP, while imports were 14.4%. So net exports were −2.7% of GDP. The US bought $880 billion a year more from abroad than it sold.
Nominal vs real GDP
Nominal GDP is measured in the prices of the day, also called current dollars. It rises when the economy makes more, but also when prices rise. Real GDP removes the effect of prices. The BEA values output at the prices of a base year, now 2017, so real GDP tracks the volume of goods and services.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; YX Insights
The chart sets both measures to 100 at the end of 2019. Both fell in the 2020 lockdowns. By the second quarter of 2026, nominal GDP was 48.5% higher than at the start. Real GDP was 16.3% higher. The gap is inflation: the BEA's GDP price index rose 27.6% over the same period, or 3.8% a year on average. We explain inflation in What Is Inflation?
US GDP growth in the second quarter of 2026
Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.2% in the second quarter of 2026, after 2.5% in the first. The rise within the quarter itself was 0.55%. For growth, the annual rate compounds that rise over four quarters, which gives 2.2%.
In current dollars, GDP grew at an annual rate of 8.5%. The gap is the rise in prices. The GDP price index rose at an annual rate of 6.1% in the quarter, faster than its average since 2019.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; YX Insights
The chart shows how many percentage points each part added to real growth. Consumer spending added 2.51 points. Investment added 0.82 and exports 0.56. Imports took away 1.66 points, because more goods and services came in from abroad. Government spending was flat, at −0.01.
What GDP leaves out
GDP measures production sold in markets, plus some services such as public schools and defence. Some things fall outside it:
Unpaid work at home. Cooking, cleaning and caring for your own children are not counted. The BEA tracks them in a separate account. For 2024, it put this household production at 16% of an extended GDP that adds it in.
Volunteering and illegal activity. These are left out because the data "are not available to accurately measure their value", in the BEA's words.
Wear and tear. GDP is "gross": it makes no deduction for buildings and machines wearing out. In the second quarter of 2026, that wear and tear came to $5.36 trillion a year, or 16.5% of GDP.
Who gets the income. GDP is a total. In 2024, the top 1/5 of US households received 52.8% of personal income, while the bottom 1/5 received 5.3%, by BEA estimates.
Well-being. In the BEA's words, GDP "is not a measure of well-being". It does not account for rates of poverty, crime or literacy.
How to read a GDP report
A few points help:
Check whether a figure is real or nominal. The headline growth rate is real GDP, at an annual rate.
Expect revisions. The BEA publishes three estimates for each quarter. Its first estimate for the second quarter of 2026, on 30 July, was 1.5%. The third estimate raised it to 2.2%.
Look at GDI too. Real GDI grew at an annual rate of 2.6% in the second quarter. The average of the two was 2.4%. That is a second view of the same growth.
Divide by the population for output per person. This is GDP per capita. US GDP per capita was $90,252 in 2025. That uses GDP for the whole of 2025, $30.86 trillion, which is below the 2026 pace because output and prices have both risen since.
Know what a recession is. Two quarters in a row of falling real GDP is a simple test. In the US, the official dates are set by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which looks at a wider range of data.
Note the next date. The first estimate for the third quarter of 2026 is due on 29 October.
GDP is the market value of the final goods and services a country produces, added up from what is spent on them. For the US, that came to $32.6 trillion a year in mid-2026. Real GDP shows how fast output is growing. The components show what drove it, while the gaps show what GDP cannot tell you.
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