On Thursday, April 28, I went to the annual Oakland County Economic Outlook luncheon. This is year 37, and it’s an institution. The forecast is presented by Dr. Gabriel M. Erlich and Donald R. Grimes, both of the University of Michigan, and their team. They have a very good track record and their forecasts have been something you can base your future fiscal policy on.

This year, the takeaways are:

–Inflation to top out at 7.5% annual in 2022, then fall to 3.6% in 2023, 2.5% in 2024.

–Federal interest rates to rise to mid-2% range by end of 2022.

–Oakland County employment to return to pre-pandemic levels in 3rd quarter of 2023. (Remember “2 weeks to flatten curve!”)

–Oakland County employment to exceed pre-pandemic levels by 2.3% by end of 2024. Michigan to exceed by 1.6%

Personally, I find this to be counter-intuitive, given all the foreboding economic news. However, these guys are quite credible, and I would certainly like this projection to be the one that comes true. So I’ve put the projections down for everyone to see, and to compare real-life performance to.

I report, you decide…to coin a phrase.