While the jobs report may have spooked recession fears among investors and Wall Street analysts, the bulk of economic data still points to an economy growing at a rapid clip.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow metric, which is not a forecast of GDP but a read of what released economic data indicates for the pace of economic growth, sees the economy as growing at a 2.9 percent annualized rate in the third quarter.
The “nowcast” was updated on Tuesday. The prior update, released last week, showed the economy growing at a 2.5 percent pace.
The May survey of professional forecasters indicated that economists expected GDP growth to come in around two percent for the third quarter, up from the prior survey’s estimate of 1.5 percent. The forecasters, however, underestimated second quarter GDP, projecting 2.1 percent growth when the economy actually grew at a 2.8 percent pace.