GDPNow Q3 growth has now reached 2.5%, up from 2.1%.
Figure 1: GDP (bold black), Survey of Professional Forecasts Average forecast for August (tan), GDPNow for 9/9 (blue square) and 9/4 (open blue square), NY Fed (red triangle), St. Louis Fed (light green inverted triangle), Goldman Sachs (teal circle), all in bn.Ch.2017$. Nowcasts are dated 9/6 unless noted; nowcast rates are calculated as the cumulative growth rate to report GDP rates for 2017Q2 2nd release. Source: BEA 2024Q2 second release, Philadelphia Fed SPF, Atlanta Fed (9/9), NY Fed (9/6), St. Louis Fed (9/6), Goldman Sachs (9/6), and author figures.
The employment situation and more trade reports lifted the nowcast. Although consumption growth is now set at 3.5%, vs. 3.8% on 8/30. What is the relative accuracy of GDPNow? I haven’t seen the latest assessment, but here is DeutscheBank’s 2019 comparison.
Source: Luzzetti, et al. “Tracking GDP,” Deutsche Bank US Economic Perspectives, 24 July 2019.
We are now about 50 days from the Q3 advance release (on 10/30), so GDPNow is about as accurate on average as the Bloomberg consensus. (The NY Fed nowcast has been heavily revised, so the MAE numbers shown above are no longer valid.)
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