From a small northwestern observatory…

One of my favorite regular “reads” is the Survey of Professional Forecasters” from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank. The main survey comes out quarterly, with occasional special editions thrown in along the way. The brilliance of the survey is its simplicity — ask a large panel of economic forecasters where they think the economy is going in terms of a handful of key indicators — GDP, unemployment, inflation. Then calculate the median and the range of responses.

The medians are fairly predictable and “sticky” (that is, this quarter’s results look a lot like last quarter’s). However, the interesting stuff is buried in the way the distribution of results change. For example, both the last survey and the current survey find that the largest number of economists think unemployment will average between 7.0% and 7.4% next year (with a median of 7.1%), down somewhat from this year. That’s pretty predictable stuff. However, this year’s distribution is skewed to the low side (a very large number of economists think unemployment will dip this year and end up as low as 7% on average) but next year, the distribution is fairly even, with the bulk of economists forecasting anywhere from 6% to 8%. In short, 2014 is pretty cloudy right now, and that means that hedging your economic bets isn’t a bad idea.

GDP projections are somewhat less rosy. In the previous survey (2nd quarter, 2013), the largest number of economists projected 2013 GDP in the 2% to 3% range, with the median at 2%. Today, that has dropped a full half-percentage point, down to 1.5%. Previously, 2014 was projected at 2.8%, and that has now been downgraded to 2.6%, although as we’ve already established, 2014 is pretty much a guessing game.

Inflation continues to be pretty-much a flat line, with a lot of “1.8%” and “2.0%” on the chart. In short, hardly anyone sees inflation above 2.3% or so in the foreseeable future.

To download the full report, go to http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/real-time-center/survey-of-professional-forecasters/2013/survq313.cfm