Having taken off the summer from writing and by and large researching as well, it has been since the start of the year since I have posted a forecast for the U.S. economy, too long (since my last forecast only extended to June of this year). So today I post my predictions for the rest of the year and beyond, as well as talk a little bit about the background work that went into the formulation of said forecast as I’ve tweaked the statistical model and mathematical formulas that culminate in this particular set of predictions about the near future of the economic environment in which we live and conduct business.

I’ll start with my predictions and then move to a discussion of the behind the scenes stuff. I predict that for the final quarter of the year we will see the economy grow by between Continue reading →

With the start of a new year comes a new short term forecast for the U.S. economy (a little later than expected, but here none the less), with a few new visual depictions of my results as I start to experiment with Tableau’s data visualization software.

To get right to business, my models predict a rather slow and steady rate of GDP growth around 0.2% over the first few months of 2016 with a slight jump in March followed by a return to a rate of around 0.2% until June, where we could see some slowdown to around 0.14% To put this in perspective, if we were to see a 0.2% steady growth rate throughout the year, we would see yearly growth of close to 2.5%, compared to an average growth rate of around 3%, this is a little below average but not alarmingly so, and is a good sign given the fears of recession that have risen in the face of the recent shock to oil prices. My exact predictions for percentage growth of GDP along with the 95% confidence interval range can be viewed in the following table. Continue reading →

After conducting some diagnostic work on my forecasting models for U.S. GDP growth and getting a clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses of my models, its time to update my predictions for the remainder of the year, as well as take a quick look at how my previous predictions regarding the last several months have faired. To take a look at the specific diagnostic work that I conducted to test the accuracy of my predictive models and see what I found, see my previous post.

What I predicted several months ago was a spike in growth to above 0.3% in June and July, and then a drop off to around 0.2% for the rest of the summer, and then slightly lower growth still in the fall. What we have seen for the summer so far is a steady level of economic growth around 0.21%. Continue reading →

This week I have decided to tackle a less regional issue in favor of something with a little more widespread applications – specifically the U.S. economy as a whole. I am taking a look at the direction that the U.S. economy is headed in in the near future. The primary way that any nations economy is measured is by its gross domestic product. Gross domestic product is formulated by adding up the total value of all of the nations goods and services produced within the given measurement period – it encompasses the entire economic output of a nation, and this is what makes it such a useful way to check a nations economic pulse. So when you want to know what the economy is doing, this is where to look. Continue reading →