FIGURES LIE AND LIERS FIGURE IS THE SAYINGBe careful when someone spouts off numbers about growth, GDP etc. Because of inflation, nominal growth is up, that's because in terms of dollars everyone is paying more for everything in the everything bubble but it doesn't mean there is actual growth.
It's real gdp that measures growth.
Here's the example.
Real GDP is often favoured over nominal GDP as it accounts for the effects of inflation. Thus, if nominal GDP grew at 4% in a given year, but the inflation rate was 5%, real GDP actually shrunk by 1% in real (constant-dollar) terms.
Get what I'm saying? Average inflation has been over 3% over last 2 years so if someone says economy is growing at 3% then was that nominal growth or real GDP? If it was nominal growth then the economy actually shrank!