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

The February 2020 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on February 13, 2020.  The headline is “WSJ Survey: Coronavirus Likely to Hit First-Quarter 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.

An excerpt:

Some 35% of economists expect the next recession will start in 2021, up from 30.9% last month’s survey, while 29.7% expect one to start in 2022. Just 10.8% see a recession starting this year.

As seen in the “Recession Probability” section, the average response as to the odds of another recession starting within the next 12 months was 25.6%. The individual estimates, of those who responded, ranged from 0% to 67%.  For reference, the average response in January’s survey was 23.97%.

As stated in the article, the survey’s 63 respondents were academic, financial and business economists.  Not every economist answered every question.  The survey was conducted February 7 – February 11, 2020.

Economic Forecasts

The current average forecasts among economists polled include the following:

GDP:

full-year 2020:  1.88%

full-year 2021:  1.94%

full-year 2022:  1.91%

Unemployment Rate:

December 2020: 3.60%

December 2021: 3.81%

December 2022: 4.01%

10-Year Treasury Yield:

December 2020: 1.98%

December 2021: 2.20%

December 2022: 2.44%

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Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by RevSD, LLC) post of February 13, 2020, titled “The February 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.