The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) regularly evaluates the quality of its economic forecasts by comparing them with the economy’s actual performance and with forecasts by the Administration and the Blue Chip consensus (an average of about 50 private-sector forecasts).

CBO’s forecasts generally have been comparable in quality with those of the Administration and the Blue Chip consensus. When CBO’s projections have proved inaccurate by large margins, the errors have tended to reflect difficulties shared by other forecasters.

This report evaluates CBO’s macroeconomic forecast over two-year and five-year horizons. The periods used for the evaluations differ by variable and by forecast horizon, depending on the availability of the needed data.  Additionally, sprinkled throughout this report are graphic representations of the data for comparisons versus Actual Growth and forecasted values by the CBO.