The April 2020 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey – Notable Aspects

The April 2020 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on April 8, 2020.  The headline is “WSJ Survey: Coronavirus to Cause Deep U.S. Contraction, 13% Unemployment.”

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.

Two excerpts:

The coronavirus pandemic will cause a severe economic contraction, 14.4 million job losses and a spike in the unemployment rate this spring, with an economic recovery starting the second half of the year, economists forecast in a Wall Street Journal survey.

Business and academic economists in this month’s survey expect, on average, that the unemployment rate will hit 13% in June this year, and still be at 10% in December. The jobless rate was 4.4% in March.

also:

Economists predict gross domestic product will contract at an annual rate of 25% in the second quarter. That is a sharp downgrade from the March survey of economists, when they expected GDP to shrink just 0.1% from April to June.

As seen in the “Recession Probability” section, the average response as to the odds of another recession starting within the next 12 months was 96.24%. The individual estimates, of those who responded, ranged from 15% to 100%.  For reference, the average response in March’s survey was 48.8%.

As stated in the article, the survey’s 57 respondents were academic, financial and business economists.  Not every economist answered every question.  The survey was conducted April 3 – April 7, 2020.

–

Economic Forecasts

The current average forecasts among economists polled include the following:

GDP:

full-year 2020:  -4.90%

full-year 2021:  5.08%

full-year 2022:  2.59%

Unemployment Rate:

December 2020: 9.66%

December 2021: 6.54%

December 2022: 4.88%

December 2023: 4.63%

10-Year Treasury Yield:

December 2020: .95%

December 2021: 1.41%

December 2022: 1.83%

____

Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by RevSD, LLC) post of April 8, 2020, titled “The April 2020 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey”

_____

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

—–

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.