Econintersect: Livingston Survey economists, who are surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia twice a year, project:
- GDP slowing to 2.1% (annual rate) in the first half of 2012
- GDP will then increase to 2.5% in the second half of the year.
- The unemployment rate at 8.9% in June 2012, and 8.7% in December 2012. [note that this survey was completed prior to the December 2011 BLS Jobs report (analysis here) where through the magic of reducing the workforce size while the population is growing lowered the unemployment rate to 8.6%.]
The current projections lowered GDP in the second half of 2011 by 0.7 percentage points from the survey of six months ago, while the forecast for the first half of 2012 was lowered 0.9 percentage points. There were 35 participants in the December 2011 Livingston Survey.
The following tables show the migration of forecasts to less good since the last survey.
source: Philly Fed
