As of 3/1/11, this page is no longer being maintained. Please see: BCI Forecast Page

Quarterly Real GDP Forecasts

 

On December 1, 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research issued a release announcing that its Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCD) had determined a peak in U.S. economic activity occurred in December 2007. Real GDP did not start to decline, however, until the third quarter of 2008. This ‘lag’ in the peaking of GDP was a key factor in the BCD’s decision to wait as long as it did to formally determine the start of the most recent recession. Indeed, roughly seven months before the BCD’s 12/11/08 announcement, Robert Hall, the chair of the BCD, said “it seems unlikely that we would ever declare a peak date when real GDP continued to rise”; ex-post, this was exactly what the BCD did. This lagging behavior in GDP relative to the start of the  late-2000s recession is shown in the  graph below.

 

agr_gdp

 

Measured on a quarterly basis, data on GDP are prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). As explained in this BEA release, a sequence of three values for any particular quarter is released over time: the ‘advance estimate’ (at the end of the first month following the end of the quarter), ‘second estimate’ (one month after the release of the ‘advance’ data), and ‘third estimate’ (two months after the release of the ‘advance’ data) values; prior to the July 2009 BEA NIPA 'comprehensive revision,' these were called the ‘advance,’ ‘preliminary,’ and ‘final’ estimates. Starting with the first quarter of 2009, I will provide 1-quarter-ahead forecasts of this key business cycle indicator. Some details on how the forecasts were produced appear here.

 

1-Quarter-Ahead Forecasts for (Seasonally Adjusted) Real GDP:

[Annualized Percent Change from Previous Quarter]

 

 

 

Quarter

 

Release Date of

Advance Data

 

 

 

Forecast

 

 

Advance Estimate

 

 

Second Estimate

 

 

Third Estimate

 

 

Annual Revision

2010:Q4

January 28, 2011

2.6

 

2010:Q3

October 29, 2010

1.8

     2.014

    2.515

    2.616

 

2010:Q2

July 30, 2010

3.2

     2.411

   1.612

   1.713

 

2010:Q1

April 30, 2010

 3.7

   3.28

  3.09

     2.710

3.7

2009:Q4

January 29, 2010

 4.2

   5.75

  5.96

   5.67

5.0

2009:Q3

October 29, 2009

 2.0

   3.52

   2.83

   2.24

1.6

2009:Q2

July 31, 2009

-1.2

-1.0

-1.0

-0.7

-0.7

2009:Q1

April 29, 2009

-5.3

-6.1

-5.7

  -5.51

-4.9

2008:Q4

January 1, 2009

--

-3.8

-6.2

-6.3

-6.8

 

 

Last updated: January 3, 2011. Link to: BCI Forecast Page.