The January 2023 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey – Notable Aspects

The January 2023 Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published on January 15, 2023. The headline is “Despite Easing Price Pressures, Economists in WSJ Survey Still See Recession This Year.”

I found numerous items to be notable – although I don’t necessarily agree with them – both within the article and in the forecasts section.

An excerpt:

While economists don’t think a recession can be avoided, they expect it to be relatively shallow and short-lived, in line with other recent surveys.

On average, they expect gross domestic product to expand at a 0.1% annual rate in the first quarter of 2023 and contract 0.4% in the second. They see no growth for the third quarter and a 0.6% growth rate for the fourth.

Economists expect GDP to stagnate this year, posting growth of just 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with the fourth quarter of 2022. In the WSJ survey in October, economists forecast 0.4% GDP growth in 2023.

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 61%. The individual estimates, of those who responded, ranged from 1% to 99%.  For reference, the average response in October’s survey [the previously published survey] was 63%.

As stated in the article, the survey’s 71 respondents were academic, financial and business economists.  The survey was conducted January 6 – January 10. 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 2022:  .97%

full-year 2023:  .17%

full-year 2024:  1.86%

full-year 2025:  2.22%

Unemployment Rate:

December 2023: 4.65%

December 2024: 4.63%

December 2025: 4.23%

10-Year Treasury Yield:

December 2023: 3.52%

December 2024: 3.33%

December 2025: 3.36%

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Please Note – The above is excerpted from the EconomicGreenfield.com (published by RevSD, LLC) post of January 15, 2023, titled “The January 2023 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.