Washington ? The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 4 percent rate from July through September, the government said Friday, but analysts remained concerned that rising unemployment and weak consumer spending will trim growth to just half that amount in the current quarter.

The Commerce Department’s final estimate of activity in the July-September showed no change in the overall figure from the figure released a month ago, although individual components of growth shifted slightly.

Consumer spending rose at an even-faster 4.2 percent rate with purchases of big-ticket items such as cars surging ahead at a 22.8 percent, reflecting cut-rate financing offers.

But economists are worried that sales during the all important Christmas season have dropped off considerably, in part because of consumer anxiety about rising unemployment, which returned to an eight-year high of 6 percent in November, and worries about the economic impact of a possible war with Iraq.

Many economists believe that growth in the current October-December will slip to around 2 percent with the most pessimistic saying it could come in under 1 percent. The concern is that with growth slowing so much, any type of jolt could push the country back into a full-blown recession.

“If we assume a pretty quick and decisive war, then the economy should do well,” said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo in Minneapolis. “But if we have a messy and costly war with a big rise in oil prices, then we could have another recession.”

Sohn said a successful war could cut $30 per barrel oil prices in half and give the economy the equivalent of a sizable tax cut while a drawn-out conflict could send oil prices soaring to $80 per barrel, disrupting business confidence and sending the stock market into another tailspin.

The 4 percent GDP growth rate in the third quarter and the expected slowdown in the current quarter continues the economy’s stop-and-go pattern in this recovery from last year’s recession. Strong growth of 5 percent in the first quarter of 2002 was followed by a weak 1.3 percent rate in the April-June quarter.

Worries that the current weakness could spread and trigger a double-dip recession prompted the Fed in November to cut interest rates by a bigger-than-expected half-point, the Fed’s 12th rate cut of the past two years.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told a New York audience Thursday night that despite the Fed’s efforts to push interest rates to the lowest level in 41 years, there were only limited signs that the economy has regained strength since hitting a “soft patch” in late August.

“The patch has certainly been soft,” Greenspan said, citing concerns about a “subdued” market for jobs, a manufacturing sector still in the doldrums and depressed business construction activity.

Another Fed official, William Poole, the head of the St. Louis regional bank, said that one of the reasons for pessimism currently is that the recovery has been so erratic.

“The soft patch finishes the year on a down note and that’s partly why so many are so glum,” he said in a speech Friday.

President Bush, worried that voters will blame his administration for the lackluster recovery, is putting together a package of tax cuts for individuals and businesses of as much as $300 billion that he will present to Congress in January.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, unveiled his own stimulus plan this week of $160 billion in tax cuts and emergency aid to the states, increasing chances that Congress will pass some compromise proposal early next year.

The GDP report Friday also included an estimate of corporate profits that showed an increase in after-tax profits of 2.1 percent in the third quarter, a slightly stronger gain than the 1.7 percent rise in the second quarter.

The uncertain recovery has kept a lid on inflation with a GDP-price gauge rising at an annual rate of just 1 percent in the third quarter, the best showing since prices fell by 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

In addition to the 4.2 percent rate of growth in consumer spending, other areas of strength in the third quarter included a 4.6 percent growth rate for U.S. export sales and a 4.3 percent jump in spending by the federal government, which reflected another big increase in defense spending.