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

The August 2020 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on August 13, 2020. The headline is “WSJ Survey: Benefits of Extra Unemployment Aid Outweigh Work Disincentive.”

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:

Economists surveyed this month saw the economy rebounding 18.3% on an annualized basis in the third quarter, following the 32.9% drop in the second quarter. That was higher than their July forecast of a 15.2% third-quarter bounceback. But economists trimmed their forecasts for the following four quarters, suggesting they see a long recovery ahead.

Roughly 70% percent of economists surveyed said the recovery would look like a “Nike swoosh,” characterized by a sharp drop, followed by a gradual recovery.

As seen in the “Recession Probability” section, the average response as to whether the economy will be in a recession within the next 12 months was 37.04%. The individual estimates, of those who responded, ranged from 0% to 100%.  For reference, the average response in July’s survey was 54.41%.

As stated in the article, the survey’s 62 respondents were academic, financial and business economists.  Not every economist answered every question.

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Economic Forecasts

The current average forecasts among economists polled include the following:

GDP:

full-year 2020:  -5.33%

full-year 2021:  4.39%

full-year 2022:  3.37%

Unemployment Rate:

December 2020: 8.96%

December 2021: 6.63%

December 2022: 5.47%

December 2023: 4.88%

10-Year Treasury Yield:

December 2020: .76%

December 2021: 1.17%

December 2022: 1.58%

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Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by RevSD, LLC) post of August 14, 2020, titled “The August 2020 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.