Here’s a compilation of e-forecasting’s January GDP estimate, Macroeconomic Adviser’s December GDP estimate and forecast for 2009Q1. E-forecasting’s estimate is that January real GDP was declining at an 11.8% at annual rates.
Figure 1: GDP (light blue bars), GDP from e-forecasting, 2/20 (blue), and from Macroeconomic Advisers 2/13 (red); Macroeconomic Advisers’ forecast for 2009Q1 (red line with *), in Ch.2000$ SAAR. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray (assuming recession has not ended by 2009M03). Source: BEA, GDP release of 30 January, e-forecasting 2/20 and Macroeconomic Advisers [xls] 2/13 release.Clearly, in order to hit the mean WSJ forecast of -4.6% SAAR growth (see discussion here, the rate of m/m decline must decelerate. As Macroeconomic Advisers notes:
…Our latest tracking forecast of a 4.6% annualized decline of GDP in the first quarter requires only 0.2% declines per month during the first quarter. …
The Macroeconomic Advisers forecast available online predates some key releases, including the industrial production release discussed here.
Originally published at Econbrowser and reproduced here with the author’s permission.
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