Weekly Update
December 29, 2025
Upcoming Events
Monday, December 29
Divisia Release
Wednesday, December 31
FOMC Minutes Release
Saturday, January 3
Paulson Speaks at International Banking, Economics, and Finance Association Meeting
Paulson Speaks at National Association for Business Economics Meeting
Recent News
Coming in hot… Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annualized rate of 4.3 percent in 2025:Q3, according to the preliminary estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Real GDP has grown at an annualized rate of 2.5 percent year-to-date.
Production is thought to have slowed a bit in the time since, while remaining strong. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model currently estimates real GDP will grow at an annualized rate of 3.0 percent in 2025:Q4. If that estimate holds, real GDP will have grown 2.6 percent in 2025. For comparison, real GDP grew 2.4 percent in 2024.
The latest numbers suggest the economy has grown much faster than Federal Reserve officials expected. At the December 2025 meeting, the median FOMC member projected real GDP would grow just 1.7 percent in 2025. Assuming there are no revisions to the 2025:Q3 estimate, real GDP would have to grow at an annualized rate of -0.6 percent in 2025:Q4 to realize that projection.
Industrial production… Industrial production increased 0.2 percent in November 2025, new data from the Fed show. Industrial production was 2.5 percentage points higher than its year-earlier level. It was 0.9 percentage points higher than it was in January 2020, just prior to the pandemic.
Capacity utilization was 76.0 percent in November, up from 75.9 percent in the prior month. It was 1.5 percentage points above its year-earlier level and 3.5 percentage points below its long-run average.
Mark your calendar… Florida Atlantic University College of Business, the American Institute for Economic Research, and the Shadow Open Market Committee will be co-hosting a monetary conference in Boca Raton, FL on January 16, 2026. Tyler Goodspeed (Chief Economist, ExxonMobil; Former Acting Chair, Council of Economic Advisers) will give the opening address. Philip N. Jefferson (Vice Chair, Federal Reserve Board of Governors) will give the keynote address.
The full schedule is available here. Registration is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. We hope you can join us!