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

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

Previously Published in CERF’s September California Economic Forecast There are no surprises in our California forecast.  There aren’t any changes either.  We expect California to continue plugging along as it has for several years now.  The growth on average will be slow, but the Bay Area will do better. We don’t see much upside potential. … Read more

Previously Published in CERF’s September 2016 California Economic Forecast: It’s time for another presidential election.  Each candidate is promising new initiatives that will bring prosperity to Americans.  So, we’re forecasting vigorous economic growth?  No. Our forecast is pretty much the same as it’s been for years, anemic economic growth as far as we can see.… Read more

Here’s the first paragraph from a FED press release of July 20th: The Federal Reserve Board on Monday approved a final rule requiring the largest, most systemically important U.S. bank holding companies to further strengthen their capital positions. Under the rule, a firm that is identified as a global systemically important bank holding company, or… Read more

Fourth quarter United States GDP contracted by about $5 billion dollars, which is 0.1 percent negative growth annualized. This is after 3.1 percent growth in the third quarter which was the strongest quarter in 2013. The largest drivers of the fourth quarter decline were a contraction in government spending of 6.6 percent and a change… Read more

This is a comment on the national November Employment Situation report released last Friday, and I use numbers from the report to calculate when the United States might reach the Federal Reserve unemployment rate goal of 6.5 percent. The unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent in October to 7.7 percent in November which might appear… Read more

The Labor Department’s Jobs report came out this morning at an 80,000 job increase for June, an 84,000 gain for the private sector and a 4,000 loss for the public sector. We had forecast a 60,000 increase overall and a 70,000 increase for the private sector. The Unemployment rate remained unchanged at 8.2 percent, the… Read more

The first release of GDP data came out this morning with an advance estimate of 2.2 percent growth for quarter 1. Contributions of growth from the major components were: Consumption Expenditures                       2.04 Investment Expenditures                           0.77           Fixed Investment                             0.18           Inventory                                          0.59 Government Expenditures               … Read more

This morning’s much anticipated fourth quarter GDP release provides a preliminary estimate of real GDP growth of 2.8 percent. To be fair, perhaps the anticipation is experienced mostly by forecasting economists and financial market watchers. I am always particularly interested in fourth quarter as it closes out the year and in this case I forecasted… Read more