2Q17 GDP Now Forecast For 2.6% -- July 11, 2017

Latest forecast: 2.6 percent — July 11, 2017.

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2017 is 2.6 percent on July 11, down from 2.7 percent on July 6.

The forecast of second-quarter real GDP growth fell 0.2 percentage points to 2.5 percent after Friday's employment release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The model's estimate of the dynamic factor for June—normalized to have mean 0 and standard deviation 1 and used to forecast the yet-to-be released monthly GDP source data—decreased from 1.08 to 0.34.

The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to second-quarter real GDP growth increased from 0.57 to 0.61 percentage points after this morning's wholesale trade report from the U.S. Census Bureau.