Wednesday, December 27, 2017

On the Mark

Most economic forecasts are not worth the pixels it takes to read them, but 2017 was actually a pretty good year for the pundits. The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed the survey of economists it took at the beginning of this year, and in some cases, the respondents came pretty close:

Unemployment Rate
Average forecast for December 2017: 4.5 percent
Actual (as of November 2017): 4.1 percent

Real Gross Domestic Product
Average forecast for 2017 (year-over-year growth in fourth quarter): 2.4 percent
Actual (year-over-year growth in third quarter): 2.3 percent

Inflation
Average forecast for annual change in consumer-price index in December 2017: 2.3 percent
Actual annual change in CPI as of November 2017: 2.2 percent

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