US GDP: follow-up on Q3 2015 result (GDP Plus @ 2.9% QoQ)

Main takeaways:

Given recent concerns about seasonal adjustment and measurement problems, BEA has recommended looking at both GDP and GDI to infer the underlying state of the economy.
However, all the measures (GDP, GDI and GDP Plus) are currently showing a similar picture: an annual pace of growth just above 2%, slowing down from the 3% pace of late 2014.

The highlights of the second GDP release for 3Q15 are in the link:

US 3Q15 GDP (second release): revised up to 2.1% (from 1.5%); real GDI printed at a healthy 3.1% in the quarter and was revised up in Q2

As mentioned in the comment US GDP: BEA working to improve growth statistics, the statistics bureau is highlighting the usefulness of their estimate of Gross Domestic Income to get a better picture of the economy.

This approach is also taken by Aruoba, Diebold, Nalewaik, Schorfheide, and Song (ADNSS) and is called GDP Plus. The authors view GDP and GDI as noisy measures of the underlying latent true GDP. The latest report estimates GDP Plus at 2.9% in the third quarter (QoQ, saar) and 2.3% compared to last year.

See the charts below comparing GDP, GDP Plus and a equally weighted average of GDP and GDI (as recently started to be published by BEA). As an interesting side comment, the charts below show that the GDP Plus estimate slowed down ahead of the GDP estimate before the GFC.