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GDP per capita is a rough proxy for a country’s average living standards. A higher GDP per capita usually reflects more economic resources available per person, a signal for prosperity.However, like all statistical measures there are caveats: it doesn’t account for income distribution, quality of life metrics, or how sustainable the economy is.Nevertheless, it is a standard that can be applied to make useful comparisons, while keeping these caveats in mind.So, what are the “richest” countries in the world? Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao ranks the top 50 countries by GDP per capita in 2025 using figures from the International Monetary...

S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) Ratings has downgraded Ukraine’s issue rating on its GDP-linked securities to ’D’ from ’CC’, following the country’s failure to make a $0.67 billion payment due on June 2, 2025. The agency does not anticipate the payment to be fulfilled within the securities’ ten business day grace period, due to the government’s moratorium on payments for this bond unless it is restructured….

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2025 is 4.6 percent on June 2, up from 3.8 percent on May 30. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcasts of second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth increased from 3.3 percent and -1.4 percent, respectively, to 4.0 percent and 0.5 percent.

Future New Orders forecasts the change in new orders over the next six months for reporting manufacturing firms. The diffusion index is calculated by taking the percent reporting increases and subtracting the percentage reporting decreases.

This week, much of the mainstream media ran with the headline that the economy contracted in the first quarter of this year. Predictably, they promptly blamed President Donald Trump. But a quick glance under the hood shows the data points to a much stronger economy than the headlines suggest. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its estimate of economic growth measured by gross domestic product (GDP) for January through March. The topline figure pointed to a contraction of 0.3 percent—a number that certainly doesn’t seem positive. If we learned anything from economic data under former President Joe Biden,...

Data unveiled early Wednesday morning showed US GDP fell -0.3% annualized in Q1, missing expectations for a 0.4% rise—and playing right into widespread fears.[i] Most headlines cast this “weak” report as a sign of what lies ahead as tariffs’ teeth really start to bite. But slow down. While there are clear signs of tariffs’ effects here, there are also mitigating factors and underlying health in these data worth acknowledging. First, let us get this out of the way: Tariffs did affect this report in all likelihood, but probably in ways that mask underlying health. The former was easy to see...

The mid-1990s feel like a different world. In the 30 years since, the global economy has shifted dramatically, across sectors and markets.But headline stats like GDP, GDP per capita, or growth rates don’t always reflect what’s happening at the individual level.So, has life actually improved over time?To help answer that, Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao visualizes figures from Our World in Data to show how daily median incomes have changed in 20 of the world’s largest economies from 1994 to 2024.All figures are in PPP-adjusted International dollars per person. They are also adjusted for inflation, taxes, and benefits.ℹ️ PPP-adjusted International dollars...

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) stated that “the vast majority of immigrants who happen to be here unlawfully” “are so critical to keep our economy going” and blamed the Trump administration’s immigration policies for GDP shrinking in the last quarter despite “inheriting a strong economy from President Biden.” Padilla stated, “You were talking in previous segments about the state of the economy. Prices are up, right? There [are] a lot of consumers on edge. When immigrants represent such significant elements of the necessary workforce in agriculture, in hospitality, in construction, in transportation, in health...

The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of tariffs and consumers eased their pace of spending. The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That was the steepest decline since the first quarter of 2022. The reading fell short of the 0.4% growth that economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected. The decline in GDP in the first quarter reflected front-running ahead of...

The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter despite underlying strength in consumer and business spending. Gross domestic product contracted at an annualized rate of 0.3 percent, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday. The decline in U.S. gross domestic product marks a sharp reversal from the 2.4 percent growth rate recorded at the end of last year. This was the lowest rate of growth since 2022, when the economy avoided an official recession but contracted for two consecutive quarters. Final sales to private domestic purchasers, a closely watched measure of business and consumer health, expanded at a healthy pace...

Wow, that was quick. The Washington Post has already taken to blaming President Donald Trump for America’s economic woes, except the new data they’re using as the basis of their argument reflected the disastrous Biden economy, not Trump’s. GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 2.3 percent, which was noticeably slower than expected and put a dent into a lot of the media brouhaha surrounding how turbo-tastic Bidenomics supposedly was. But Post economic reporter Abha Bhattarai, desperate to spin this as somehow Trump’s fault, blamed the quirk on the economy getting the heebie-jeebies over his policies, before...

Total global debt has peaked to 326% of global GDP, adding an additional $12 trillion of debt in the last three quarters of 2024, according to the Institute of International Finance. This figure surpasses what we saw amid the pandemic and is expected to continually rise and governments continue to borrow with no intention of repayment. The Big Bang of the sovereign debt crisis began in 2015.75, as indicated by the computers, around the introduction of negative rates and Quantitative Easing, which shifted the risk from the free market to the central banks. The 2015.75 date was also 26 years...

Beyond providing supplemental income for Mexican households, remittances—funds sent by migrants to friends and families in their home country—provide a stable flow of developmental finance to the poorest subregions of the country, which have not historically benefited from international capital flows, such as development aid or foreign direct investment. Mexico, the world’s second-largest recipient of remittances, has seen a steady increase in the total volume of remittances received, primarily due to the strength of the U.S. labor market and concurrent wage growth among Mexican workers in the United States. Mechanisms to keep remittances secure are not impermeable to criminal organizations,...

The U.S. economy posted another solid though slightly disappointing period of growth in the third quarter, propelled higher by strong consumer spending that has defied expectations for a slowdown. Gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced during the three-month period from July through September, increased at a 2.8% annualized rate. The report confirms that the U.S. expansion has continued despite elevated interest rates and long-standing worries that the burst of fiscal and monetary stimulus that carried the economy through the Covid crisis wouldn’t be enough to sustain growth. However, resilient consumer spending, which accounts for...

The presidential campaign season is once again turning politicians into pandering game show hosts, promising voters huge tax cuts and spending expansions with no regard to the debt crisis these policies will accelerate. Budget deficits are set to exceed $2 trillion this year — despite relative peace and prosperity — and then surge to $4 trillion within a decade under current policies. For the first time since the end of World War II, the federal debt will top 100% of the gross domestic product. The impending completion of the Biden-Harris administration brings an opportunity to assess their role in these...

The UK's public sector debt has hit 100% of the value of the country's annual economic output for the first time since the 1960s, according to official figures released ahead of the chancellor's maiden budget. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, in a preliminary estimate, that the figure had risen from the 99.3% figure recorded the previous month. Wider data revealed by the number crunchers showed that the government borrowed £13.7bn in August, up by £2bn on the figure expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

Nvidia Corp.’s meteoric rise makes it not only the third-largest company in the U.S. in terms of market capitalization, but also bigger than most other countries’ economies, based on gross domestic product. The chip maker’s stock closed at $788.17 on Friday, giving it a market value of $1.97 trillion. That figure is greater than the GDP of every nation in the world but 11, beating the likes of Russia, South Korea and Australia, according to February International Monetary Fund data compiled by Forbes. Of course, comparing a single stock’s market cap to a country’s GDP is not a perfect exercise,...

During an interview aired on Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that the current interest burden of the national debt is at a “normal” level, but President Joe Biden wants to cut the deficit “and doing that would be compatible with making investments in the economy that are necessary to support its growth. But we’re going to have to let important pieces of the Tax Cut[s] and Job[s] Act expire.” Yellen said, “Well, the debt — the ratio of debt to GDP — we have a very large economy, and the ratio...

Boom boom! ATL Fed Nowcast plunges to 1.8% as their consumer spending estimate collapses – less than 3 weeks ago, they were forecasting 4.2% growth for Q2; a recession likely began in April. The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2024 is 1.8 percent on June 3, down from 2.7 percent on May 31. After recent releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcasts for annualized second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real private fixed investment growth declined from 2.6 percent and 3.1...

The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first three months of the year, expanding at an annual pace of just 1.3 percent, revised government data showed Thursday. The downward revision was primarily driven by data showing that consumer spending grew by significantly less than previously estimated. This was the smallest expansion in gross domestic product in almost two years. The prior estimate had the economy growing at a 1.6 percent pace in the first quarter. Consumer spending grew an an annualized pace of two percent in the first quarter, the new figures show, down from the previous...