Fra Atlanta FED’s ledende indikator ( baseret på Hard Data):
Latest forecast: 1.5 percent — February 14, 2019
Note: Updates of GDPNow nowcasts of GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 will continue until the day before the first official estimate is released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on February 28. The initial GDPNow nowcast of first-quarter GDP growth is now scheduled for March 1 after the personal income and outlays release by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute for Supply Management.
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2018 is 1.5 percent on February 14, down from 2.7 percent on February 6. After this morning’s retail sales and retail inventories releases from the U.S. Census Bureau, the nowcast of fourth-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth fell from 3.7 percent to 2.6 percent, and the nowcast of the contribution of inventory investment to fourth-quarter real GDP growth fell from -0.27 percentage points to -0.55 percentage points.
The next GDPNow update is Thursday, February 21. Please see the “Release Dates” tab below for a list of upcoming releases.
Going Inside GDPNow
In this Economy Matters podcast, Atlanta Fed policy adviser and economist Pat Higgins, the creator of GDPNow, discusses the tool, how it works, and some of the challenges involved in measuring the economy.
The growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) measured by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is a key metric of the pace of economic activity. It is one of the four variables included in the economic projections of Federal Reserve Board members and Bank presidents for every other Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. As with many economic statistics, GDP estimates are released with a lag whose timing can be important for policymakers. For example, of the four scheduled 2014 release dates of an “advance” (or first) estimate of GDP growth, two are on the second day of a scheduled FOMC meeting with the other two on the day after the meeting. In preparation for FOMC meetings, policymakers have the Fed Board staff projection of this “advance” estimate at their disposal. These projections—available through 2008 at the Philadelphia Fed’s Real Time Data Center—have generally been more accurate than forecasts from simple statistical models. As stated by economists Jon Faust and Jonathan H. Wright in a 2009 paper, “by mirroring key elements of the data construction machinery of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Fed staff forms a relatively precise estimate of what BEA will announce for the previous quarter’s GDP even before it is announced.”