Grant Aarons, Daniele Caratelli, Matthew Cocci, Domenico Giannone, Argia Sbordone, and Andrea Tambalotti

What is the weather today? You don’t need to be a meteorologist to answer this question. Just take a look outside the window. Macroeconomists do not have this luxury. The first official estimate of GDP this quarter will not be published until the end of July. In fact, we don’t even know what GDP was last quarter yet! But while we wait for these crucial data, we float in a sea of information on all aspects of the economy: employment, production, sales, inventories, you name it. . . . Processing this information to figure out if it is rainy or sunny out there in the economy is the bread and butter of economists on trading desks, at central banks, and in the media. Thankfully, recent advances in computational and statistical methods have led to the development of automated real-time solutions to this challenging big data problem, with an approach commonly referred to as nowcasting. This post describes how we apply these techniques here at the New York Fed to produce the FRBNY Nowcast, and what we can learn from it. It also serves as an introduction to our Nowcasting Report, which we will update weekly on our website starting this Friday, April 15.