Introduction As CERF has previously documented, demographic and economic data indicate that Ventura County’s economy is stuck in a prolonged period of weakness. Data indicate that the county’s population peaked back in 2016 and has declined every year since. The civilian labor force peaked in 2012. Real GDP peaked in 2007, prior to the Great… Read more

Soft Landing JP Morgan’s assessment that the Federal Reserve has achieved a soft-landing for the U.S. economy is incorrect. An economic soft landing is where the Fed utilizes their policy instruments to engineer a subtle economic slowdown that brings inflation down to its two percent target from a rate that was higher than two percent… Read more

A Personal Story I started tracking, modeling, and forecasting Ventura County (along with the San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles County economies) in 2000. The economic growth that was occurring in Ventura County from 1980 through 2007 would have made anyone proud. Not only was the growth explosive, but, it provided high-education jobs… Read more

Introduction The BEA published updated Ventura County Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures Thursday, December 7, 2023. The release provides revisions to all U.S. county-level GDP measures for the years from 2017 to 2021, and provides previously unreleased estimates for 2022. Strikingly, in 2022, Ventura County’s GDP contracted by 0.4 percent, whereas Los Angeles County’s economy… Read more

Written October 16, 2023 A Review of 2023 Thus Far Earlier this year we said these things regarding the U.S. economic outlook: The U.S. economy will not experience a recession in 2023.  The economy will experience Stagflation: slow-growth and persistent inflation that is well above the Fed’s inflation target of two percent. On April 4,… Read more

GDP growth is the single most important measure of Ventura County’s economy, as it provides a breadth and depth that no other economic measure can match. The first estimate of Ventura County’s 2021 GDP was released December 8th by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). This release consists of data on every county in the U.S.,… Read more

Written October 21, 2022 The fundamental question for the U.S. macroeconomic forecast is if the pandemic recovery can continue or if the economy is heading into a recession. This outcome will be determined largely by Federal Reserve actions during the quarters ahead. Given how long the Fed waited to fight the current bought of inflation,… Read more

The latest Ventura County GDP data was released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. This release consists of GDP data for every county and metropolitan area in the U.S. It includes revisions to previously released estimates from 2001 to 2018, and it provides the BEA’s preliminary estimates of 2019 county GDP. Revised… Read more

This essay was written October 26, and published in the Ventura County Economic Forecast Publication that was released on November 5. The U.S. experienced a historic contraction in March, a recession that will mark the history books with its severity and sudden-ness. The $2.2 trillion contraction from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second… Read more

Written by Dan Hamilton & Matthew Fienup The BLS April Employment Situation is now available for all to see.  After economic forecast houses across the globe ran their models beginning in mid-March and re-ran them again and again until as recently as last night, we now have bona fide economic data on the historical and… Read more