Economics - Unemployment...?

Question

I need to track down an 18 month forecast for the unemployment rate in the U.S. It should extend out to June of 2008.

Does anyone know where I can find one for free? I have found some, but they are only for 6 months and not what I am looking for.

Any guidance here is appreciated.

Thanks for the website. The information you gave me will in fact work, but I can't find the exact spot in the site where you got it. Can you paste the link in? Thanks for your help - just what I needed!

Answer 1

If you're looking for "official" forecasts, I can't imagine you'll see one for longer than 6 months. However, there are a number of research centers throughout the country that do economic forecasts.

My favorite is this guy:

http://robinson.gsu.edu/efc/index.html

However, he only predicts by quarter, but hopefully this will help you out:

Q1 07 4.9
Q2 07 4.9
Q3 07 5.0
Q4 07 5.1
Q1 08 5.1
Q2 08 5.1
Q3 08 5.1
Q4 08 5.1


I realize this isn't exactly what you're looking for but hopefully this helps you out some.

Answer 2

Of all the things to forecast, I can't imagine a forecast of unemployment rates would be worth the paper they're written on. If you could go back a year in a time machine, and provide economists back then with all of this year's other economic data, they'd STILL all get a forecast of the unemployment rate wrong.

Probably the very best estimate you could do would be to predict a flatline continuation of the present rate (4.5%) -- that would be as good as anyone else's.