GDP Release On Thursday, Here’s The Latest Forecast

The base forecast is 1.2 percent with real final sales at 0.9 percent and real final private domestic sales at 1.8 percent.

GDPNow GDP Nowcast for 2026 Q1

As of April 21, the GDPNow base forecast is 1.2 percent.

GDPNow Current Numbers

• Headline GDP Nowcast: 1.2 percent

• Real Final Sales: 0.9 percent

• Real Final Private Sales: 1.8 percent

Real Final Sales vs GDP

The difference between GDP and Real Final Sales (RFS) is Change in Private Inventories that nets to zero over time.

RFS is the actual bottom line number. For that reason, the BEA would be wise to throw the headline number in the garbage.

Understanding GDPNow

GDPNow is a “Nowcast Estimate” not a prediction. It’s a running estimate of what the BEA would report IF the BEA were to produce a GDP report at the current time.

Initial estimates often look and often are ridiculous. That’s not a bug it’s a design feature.

As economic reports come in, the nowcasts tend to stabilize a bit. In this case, it was mostly a slow sink.

Quarter Evolution

The bounce on April 21 was due to retail sales, mostly gasoline, but it counts.

Estimated Contributions

CIPI stands for Change in Private Inventories.

Inventories net to zero over time. That means the base number is not the best one to follow.

Real final sales is only 0.9 percent, but real final private domestic sales is a solid 1.8 percent.

Net exports are negative.

I am suspicious of these numbers due to the Supreme Court tariff decision and because of gold and silver exports.

But I have no better number to offer. The Econoday consensus is 2.1 percent for the headline number, which I suspect is high.

Finally, the international trade in goods report tomorrow could change these estimates a lot.