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

The February 2019 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on February 7, 2019.  The headline is “ Most Economists Say Fresh Government Shutdown Would Hurt U.S. Growth.”

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:

In response to a separate question, most forecasters, 45.7%, said they expect the next recession to start in 2020, while 39.1% predicted it will start in 2021.

also:

More than three-quarters of forecasters, 76.4%, said they saw a greater risk that the economy would grow more slowly than it would grow faster. While that was a drop from 83.9% in January, it remains a sign of pessimism about the outlook. This time a year ago, fewer than 30% of respondents saw the risk to their growth forecast as tilted to the downside.

As seen in the “Recession Probability” section, the average response as to the odds of another recession starting within the next 12 months was 24.53%. The individual estimates, of those who responded, ranged from 0% to 60%.  For reference, the average response in January’s survey was 24.80%.

As stated in the article, the survey’s respondents were 62 academic, financial and business economists.  Not every economist answered every question.  The survey was conducted February 1 – February 5, 2019.

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The current average forecasts among economists polled include the following:

GDP:

full-year 2018:  3.0%

full-year 2019:  2.2%

full-year 2020:  1.7%

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: 3.04%

December 2020: 3.08%

December 2021: 3.11%

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Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by RevSD, LLC) post of February 7, 2019, titled “The February 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.