The April 2019 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey – Notable Aspects

The April 2019 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on April 11, 2019.  The headline is “Raising Minimum Wage Would Cost Jobs, Say Economists in WSJ Survey.”

I found numerous items to be notable – although I don’t necessarily agree with them – both within the article and in the “Economist Q&A” section.

An excerpt:

Nearly half of respondents expected the next recession to start in 2020, while 40% predicted the next downturn will start in 2021.

But the number of economists who say the economy could surprise them for the better nearly doubled to more than 22% in April from the prior month.

As seen in the “Recession Probability” section, the average response as to the odds of another recession starting within the next 12 months was 25.80%. The individual estimates, of those who responded, ranged from 0% to 60%.  For reference, the average response in March’s survey was 24.51%.

As stated in the article, the survey’s respondents were 63 academic, financial and business economists.  Not every economist answered every question.  The survey was conducted April 5 – April 9, 2019.

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The current average forecasts among economists polled include the following:

GDP:

full-year 2018:  3.0%

full-year 2019:  2.1%

full-year 2020:  1.8%

full-year 2021:  1.8%

Unemployment Rate:

December 2019: 3.7%

December 2020: 3.8%

December 2021: 4.1%

10-Year Treasury Yield:

December 2019: 2.80%

December 2020: 2.83%

December 2021: 2.90%

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Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by RevSD, LLC) post of April 11, 2019, titled “The April 2019 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey”

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RevSD, LLC offers the above commentary for informational purposes only, and does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by these outside parties.

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RevSD, LLC is a management consulting firm and strategic advisory that focuses on the analysis of current and future weak(ening) economic conditions, and offers businesses and other entities advice, strategies, and actionable methods on how to optimally adapt to such challenging, complex conditions.