Economy of the United States

[54][55][56] The largest U.S. trading partners are Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, India, and Vietnam.

[72][73] The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was enacted by the United States Congress, and in the ensuing years the U.S. experienced the longest economic expansion on record by July 2019.

[102] The approach, advanced by British economist John Maynard Keynes, gave elected officials a leading role in directing the economy since spending and taxes are controlled by the U.S. president and Congress.

The "Baby Boom" saw a dramatic increase in fertility in the period 1942–1957; it was caused by delayed marriages and childbearing during the depression years, a surge in prosperity, a demand for suburban single-family homes (as opposed to inner city apartments), and new optimism about the future.

[130] By June 2020, the slump in US continental flights due to the coronavirus pandemic had resulted in the US government temporarily halting service of fifteen US airlines to 75 domestic airports.

[171][172] Some scholars, including business theorist Jeffrey Pfeffer and political scientist Daniel Kinderman, posit that contemporary employment practices in the United States relating to the increased performance pressure from management, and the hardships imposed on employees such as toxic working environments, precarity, and long hours, could be responsible for 120,000 excess deaths annually, making the workplace the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.

[180] Between 2009 and 2010, following the Great Recession, the emerging problem of jobless recoveries resulted in record levels of long-term unemployment with more than six million workers looking for work for more than six months as of January 2010.

[203][160] According to one analysis middle-class incomes in the United States fell into a tie with those in Canada in 2010, and may have fallen behind by 2014, while several other advanced economies have closed the gap in recent years.

[237] As of 2018, the number of U.S. citizens residing in their vehicles increased in major cities with significantly higher than average housing costs such as Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco.

[242][243] As of January 2024, in roughly half of cities in the U.S., workers need incomes of $100,000 or more in order to purchase a home as a result of rising housing prices and interest rate hikes.

[260] According to journalist and author Alissa Quart, the cost of living is rapidly outpacing the growth of salaries and wages, including those for traditionally secure professions such as teaching.

[263] Some experts assert that the US has experienced a "two-tier recovery", which has benefitted 60% of the population, while the other 40% on the "lower tier" have been struggling to pay bills as the result of stagnant wages, increases in the cost of housing, education and healthcare, and growing debts.

[286][287] A May 2018 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that over five million people in the United States live "in 'Third World' conditions".

[293][294][295] Sociologist Matthew Desmond writes in his 2023 book Poverty, by America that the US "offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world," which has "swelled the ranks of the working poor, most of whom are thirty-five or older.

"[296] Social scientist Mark Robert Rank asserts that the high rates of poverty in the U.S. can largely be explained as structural failures at the economic and political levels.

American companies such as Boeing, Cessna (see: Textron), Lockheed Martin (see: Skunk Works), and General Dynamics produce a majority of the world's civilian and military aircraft in factories across the United States.

[371] Americas ten largest trading partners are China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany, South Korea, United Kingdom, France, India and Taiwan.

[391][394] In January 2012, the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association unanimously recommended that government debt be allowed to auction even lower, at negative absolute interest rates.

In the years following the Great Depression, it devised a complex system to stabilize prices for agricultural goods, which tend to fluctuate wildly in response to rapidly changing supply and demand.

[427] While leaders of America's two most influential political parties generally favored economic deregulation during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there was less agreement concerning regulations designed to achieve social goals.

During the 1980s, the government relaxed labor, consumer and environmental rules based on the idea that such regulation interfered with free enterprise, increased the costs of doing business, and thus contributed to inflation.

The response to such changes is mixed; many Americans continued to voice concerns about specific events or trends, prompting the government to issue new regulations in some areas, including environmental protection.

In the United States, the corporation has emerged as an association of owners, known as stockholders, who form a business enterprise governed by a complex set of rules and customs.

Means of addressing the aging trend include immigration (which theoretically brings in younger workers) and higher fertility rates, which can be encouraged by incentives to have more children (e.g., tax breaks, subsidies, and more generous paid leave).

[455] The Congressional Budget Office estimated in May 2019 that mandatory spending (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) will continue growing relative to the size of the economy (GDP) as the population ages.

"[459] And in recent years, business creation has been documented by scholars such as David Audretsch to be a major driver of economic growth in both the United States and Western Europe.

Between 2000 and 2022's edition of the list, the top spot on the Fortune 500 was occupied by either the auto manufacturer General Motors (GM), the oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, or the retailer Walmart.

These firms range from hardware manufacturers like Dell Technologies, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco, to software and computing infrastructure programmers like Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe, and Intuit.

Top ten U.S. banks by assets[485][486][487][488] A 2012 International Monetary Fund study concluded that the U.S. financial sector has grown so large that it is slowing economic growth.

New York University economist Thomas Philippon supported those findings, estimating that the U.S. spends $300 billion too much on financial services per year, and that the sector needs to shrink by 20%.

Consolidated B-24 Liberators at the Consolidated-Vultee Plant in Fort Worth, Texas , 1943
President Donald Trump with automobile industry leaders, 2017
CPI 1914-2022
M2 money supply increases Year/Year
United States real quarterly GDP (annualized)
U.S. cumulative real (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth by US president (from Reagan to Obama) [ 137 ]
Private sector workers earnings compared to GDP
Private sector workers made ~$2 trillion or about 29.6% of all money earned in Q3 2023 (before taxes)
Quarterly GDP not Annualized
Private Sector Workers Total Earnings
Number of businesses by type (US Census Bureau, 2019)
Job growth by US president, measured as cumulative percentage change from month after inauguration to end of term [ 149 ]
Panel chart illustrates nine key economic variables measured annually in 2014–2017. The years 2014–2016 were during President Obama's second term, while 2017 was during President Trump's term. Refer to citations on detail page.
US Census Bureau (number of employees per business)
Since the 1970s there has been a decoupling of U.S. wage gains from worker productivity. [ 157 ]
U1-U6 unemployment rate
U.S. real median household income (1984–2021)
U.S. family pre-tax income and net worth distribution for 2013 and 2016, from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances [ 200 ]
Income before (green) and after (pink) taxes and transfer payments for different income groups starting with the lowest quintile
Cost of housing by State
Wages in the United States
Nominal wages
Number in poverty and poverty rate: 1959 to 2016. United States.
A homeless camp under a highway bridge in New Orleans, LA
A homeless camp in New Orleans, March 2023
U.S. health insurance coverage by source in 2016. CBO estimated ACA/Obamacare was responsible for 23 million persons covered via exchanges and Medicaid expansion. [ 298 ]
Chart showing life expectancy at birth and health care spending per capita for OECD countries as of 2015. The U.S. is an outlier, with much higher spending but below average life expectancy. [ 299 ]
Bar chart comparing healthcare costs as percentage of GDP across OECD countries
U.S. uninsured number (millions) and rate (%), including historical data through 2016 and two CBO forecasts (2016/Obama policy and 2018/Trump policy) through 2026. Two key reasons for more uninsured under President Trump include: 1) Eliminating the individual mandate to have health insurance; and 2) Stopping cost sharing reduction payments. [ 300 ]
A wheat harvest in Idaho
Statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that, in 2008, the number of business 'deaths' began overtaking the number of business 'births' and that the trend continued at least through 2012. [ 333 ]
The Interstate Highway System extends 46,876 miles (75,440 km). [ 339 ]
The Port of Long Beach , The largest ports in the United States
Countries by natural gas proven reserves (2014). The U.S. holds the world's fourth largest natural gas reserves.
Protectionist measures since 2008 by country [ 364 ]
The amount of U.S. public debt , measured as a percentage of GDP, held by the public since 1900
The Federal Reserve is the central banking system of the United States.
At least 72% of Chinese, American and European respondents to a 2020−2021 European Investment Bank climate survey stated that climate change had an impact on everyday life.
Number of countries having a banking crisis in each year since 1800. This is based on This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly [ 426 ] which covers only seventy countries. The general upward trend might be attributed to many factors. One of these is a gradual increase in the percent of people who receive money for their labor. The dramatic feature of this graph is the virtual absence of banking crises during the period of the Bretton Woods agreement , 1945 to 1971. This analysis is similar to Figure 10.1 in Reinhart and Rogoff (2009). For more details see the help file for "bankingCrises" in the Ecdat package available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).
CBO: U.S. Federal spending and revenue components for fiscal year 2023. Major expenditure categories are healthcare, Social Security, and defense; income and payroll taxes are the primary revenue sources.
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline scenario comparisons: June 2017 (essentially the deficit trajectory that President Trump inherited from President Obama), April 2018 (which reflects Trump's tax cuts and spending bills), and April 2018 alternate scenario (which assumes extension of the Trump tax cuts, among other current policy extensions). [ 441 ]
Restaurants and shops in Chinatown, Philadelphia
Tennessee in 1897. The U.S. was a leader in the adoption of electric lighting .
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are two of the most well-known American entrepreneurs.
Survival rate of U.S. start-ups, 1977–2012. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Dynamic Statistics, Published by Gallup, reproduced in UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, Figure 5.7, p. 143
Quarterly U.S. venture capital investments, 1995–2017
Quarterly U.S. venture capital investments, 1995–2017
Gross domestic expenditure on R&D in the U.S. as a percentage of GDP, 2002–2013. Other countries are given for comparison. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030
R&D by country
World shares of GDP, research spending, researchers and scientific publications, 2009 and 2013. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, Figure 1.7
US research and development budget by government agency, 1994–2014. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, Figure 5.4, based on data from American Association for the Advancement of Science
Science and engineering in the U.S. by state. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, Figure 5.6, based on data from American Association for the Advancement of Science
San Francisco is one of the world's largest financial centers . [ 466 ]
High-tech exports from the U.S. as a percentage of the world share, 2008–2013. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, Figure 5.10, based on Comtrade database
A typical Walmart discount department store (location: Laredo, Texas )
The New York Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in the world.