GDP Forecasts: The Latest From The WSJ Economists And The Fed

Today's FOMC statement informs us that:

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that economic activity has been expanding moderately after having changed little during the first quarter.

Below is a snapshot of a table from the Fed's website. It includes forecasts for GDP, Unemployment and Headline and Core PCE Inflation. But for now, we'll just focus on GDP. The yellow highlights focus on the latest forecasts for 2015 annual GDP (the central tendency and range) and the "Longer run" expectation for the next 5-6 years.

Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal did its monthly survey of economists on a variety of economic metrics, including of course GDP. Sixty-six of the 72 economists solicited participated. Here is a look at the range of forecasts for 2015 annual GDP. We've calculated the median (middle), mean (average) and mode (most frequent). We've also documented the range of Fed forecasts in today's projections.

As we can see, the median and mode matched the top of the Fed's central tendency. The mean was a tad higher at 2.1%, which is accounted for by optimistic skew of the survey responses.

Here is a look at the WSJ responses for the longer run. Here the median, mean and mode spread out. The mode, 11 of the 52 responses remains at 2%. The mean rises to 2.3 percent, and the median response was 2.4%.

Of course, we're still in the early stages of accumulating 2015 GDP numbers. Even though we're well into the second quarter, the BEA's next release will be its Third Estimate of Q1 GDP. As for Q2, here's a look at the latest WSJ survey results.

We'll close with a snapshot of the latest Atlanta Fed GDPNow™ forecast for Q2, at 1.9% as of June 16th.