US economy is believed to have grown at a solid pace again last quarter

WASHINGTON (AP) — Powered by consumer spending, the U.S. economy likely kept expanding at a healthy pace from July through September despite the pressure of still-high interest rates.

The Commerce Department is expected to report Wednesday that the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — grew at a 2.6% annual pace last quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. That would be down from a 3% annual rate in the April-June period. But it would still amount to a solid pace as Americans ponder the state of the economy in the final stretch of the presidential race.

Wednesday's report is the first of three estimates the government will make of GDP growth for the third quarter of the year. The U.S. economy, the world's biggest, has shown surprising resilience in the face of the much higher borrowing rates the Federal Reserve imposed in 2022 and 2023 in its drive to curb inflation. Despite widespread predictions that the economy would succumb to a recession, it has kept growing, with employers still hiring and consumers still spending.

In a sign that the nation's households, whose purchases drive most of the economy, will continue spending, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index posted its biggest monthly gain since March 2021. The proportion of consumers who expect a recession in the next 12 months dropped to its lowest point since the board first posed that question in July 2022.

At the same time, the nation's once-sizzling job market has lost some momentum. On Tuesday, the government reported that the number of job openings in the United States fell in September to its lowest level since January 2021. And employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month so far this year — a healthy number but down from a record 604,000 in...