Jovanne Barsano, at right, looks at new Dodge Chargers with the help of his friends at Helfman Dodge on the Katy Freeway Thursday June 19, 2014.If you had to point to one culprit holding back the economy over the past 18 months, it would be the auto industry. Supply chain problems like the shortage of semiconductors have contributed to weak economic growth, anemic productivity, rising prices and higher interest rates as the Federal Reserve struggles to control inflation.
That deficit has affected the economy in all sorts of ways. Automobiles detracted 2 percent from real gross domestic product growth in the third quarter of 2021 due to the sales slump, and as of the third quarter of 2022 has yet to bounce back.
All of those downstream effects mean that it’s a big deal for the economy that production is finally normalizing. Earlier this month we learned that new vehicle sales in October jumped to 14.9 million from 13.5 million, the highest level since January. That’s still well below the pre-pandemic normal, but it’s huge for measures of output like GDP.
No chips until the fourth quarter of 2023.