The growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) is a key indicator of economic activity, but the official estimate is released with a delay. Our GDPNow forecasting model provides a "nowcast" of the official estimate prior to its release.
Recent forecasts for the GDPNow model are available here. More extensive numerical details—including underlying source data, forecasts, and model parameters—are available as a separate spreadsheet.
Latest forecast:
2.8
percent —
December 22, 2017
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2017 is 2.8 percent on December 22, down from 3.3 percent on December 19. The forecast of fourth-quarter real consumer spending growth fell from 3.1 percent to 2.9 percent after this morning’s personal income and outlays release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment fell from -0.14 percentage points to -0.40 percentage points after this morning’s advance durable manufacturing release from the U.S. Census Bureau and the release of the revised underlying detail tables for the National Income and Product Accounts by the BEA this morning.
The next GDPNow update is Wednesday, January 3. Please see the "Release Dates" tab below for a full list of upcoming releases.
...MORE
If interested see also: "https://www.frbatlanta.org/-/media/documents/cqer/researchcq/gdpnow/RealGDPTrackingSlides.pdf" (5 page PDF)
And the New York Fed's Nowcast (which uses a different methodology):
...MOREDec 22, 2017: New York Fed Staff Nowcast
- The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 3.9% for 2017:Q4 and 3.2% for 2018:Q1.
