GDP For 2025 Q3 May Be Delayed. What Are The Current Estimates?

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

Tuesday, October 7, 2025 3:28 PM EDT

(Click on image to enlarge)

GDPNow Current Estimates

GDP: 3.8 Percent
Real Final Sales: 3.4 Percent
Real Final Domestic Sales: 2.7 Percent
Real Final Private Domestic Sales: 2.9 Percent

GDPNow has had a hot hand. But be warned, those estimates are missing many key economic reports.

Six Delayed Reports

Oct 1: Construction Spending
Oct 2: Motor Vehicle Sales
Oct 2: Jobless Claims
Oct 2: Factory Orders
Oct 3: Employment Situation (Nonfarm Payrolls Household and Establishment surveys)
October 7: International Trade in Goods and Services

The BEA’s scheduled GDP release date is Thursday, October 30, 2025, at 8:30 AM ET.

I believe shutdown will be over by then, but perhaps not. And the longer the delay, the more likely inputs to the GDP report will be suspect and subject to big revisions.

Notice from GDPNow

Today the Atlanta Fed issued this GDPNow Notice.

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2025 is 3.8 percent on October 7, unchanged from October 1 after rounding. Due to the government shutdown, today’s GDPNow update is based only on the Nonmanufacturing ISM Report on Business released on October 3 by the Institute for Supply Management. After that release, the nowcast of third-quarter real gross private domestic investment growth decreased from 4.2 percent to 4.0 percent.

Due to the government shutdown, the GDPNow update scheduled for Thursday, October 9, will be deferred until a new monthly data release is available for the model.

My GDPNow Comments

This GDPNow update included ISM but is missing the 6 reports I highlighted. It makes no sense for GDPNow to update estimates with so many missing reports, thus the deferment.

What’s striking about the graph is the discrepancy between GDPNow and the Blue Chip consensus.

Blue Chip is an expensive report and GDPNow was authorized to chart that on a delay.

My eyeball estimate is the gap between GDPNow and Blue Chip was ~1.8 percentage points on ~September 8.

That’s a big gap.

Today’s International Trade in Goods and Services report (Missing in Action) was potentially huge. What was the trade deficit?

The other big missing report was nonfarm payrolls.

Those two reports could have canceled each other, been irrelevant, or produced a big swing.

Numbers to Watch

The headline number, GDP, was never the best number to watch. But it is always the most hyped.

The difference between GDP and real final sales is inventory adjustment which nets to zero over time.

But tariffs have hugely distorted the import- and export-based numbers.

The estimates to watch now, if we had numbers, are final domestic sales and private final domestic sales.

The latest private final sales estimate is 2.9 percent, but that may have changed in a big way if we had the International Trade in Goods and Services report due today.

Meanwhile, add GDPNow to the list of government shutdown economic report casualties.