March Flash Estimate of Monthly GDP Upshot: First Quarter Growth at 2.8%

e-forecasting.com's U.S. monthly GDP, monthlyGDP ™, rose in March by an annualized month-to-month growth rate of 1.2% to $18,921 billion of chained 2012 dollars expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates, following an increase of 2.4% in February.

A popular "growth" number for economic performance - used by news media and well understood by the public – refers to the annualized quarterly growth rate in real GDP computed from the official quarterly data of the national accounts. For monthly frequency, the annualized rolling three-month growth rate in monthly GDP, a monthly equivalent to quarterly-data growth rate, posted a reading of (+2.8%) in the three months to March 2019 from the previous period, three months to December 2018.

March's reading of the rolling three-month growth rate "was 0.5 percent point(s) below the country's potential 88-year average growth rate of 3.3%." said Evangelos Otto Simos, editor-in-chief of this Digest and professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Monthly GDP at "today's prices," which is officially called the market value of United States' output of goods and services expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates in current market prices, posted a reading of $21,024 billion. Globally thinking, the size of the American market for doing business is about $21 trillion today.                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Lastly, the price index for monthly GDP, officially called the GDP price deflator - seasonally adjusted and set to equal 100 in 2012 - increased by an annual rate of (+2.4%) in March from the previous month to a level of 111.0. In other words, using the price index of monthly GDP, "…US GDP-based inflation runs at a month-to-month annualized speed (rate) of (+2.4%)," Simos added.

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