New, illustrative charts that aim to graphically display judgments of uncertainty and risks by Federal Reserve rate-setting committee members related to their projections of change in key economic indicators were released Friday by the agency.
The charts will debut during the committee’s meetings next week in Washington.
The new charts will be included in the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) quarterly Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), the Fed said. Specifically, the charts will display committee participants’ judgments of uncertainty and risks in their projections of changes in real gross domestic product, the unemployment rate, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, and core PCE inflation.
The charts will debut in the SEP released during the committee’s Dec. 15-16 meeting. The first, the Fed said, will illustrate the proportion of participants who indicated that the uncertainty surrounding their projections for each variable was higher or lower relative to the average level of uncertainty over the past 20 years. The second new chart, the Fed said, will show the proportion of participants who saw the risks to their projections as weighted toward the upside or downside.
All SEPs, the Fed said, will be published at 2 p.m. ET on the second day of each March, June, September and December FOMC meetings (instead of typically three weeks later as in the past).
The written part of the SEP that described the exhibits is being discontinued, the Fed said.