Housing services are making an annualized contribution to core PCE that is more than double their contribution before the pandemic. That said, the housing sector is highly interest sensitive, and the most recent reading of one national indicator pointed to house prices  -7having declined 2.5 percent over the five months ending in November. 12 Similarly, rents based on new leases are decelerating sharply.
Economists use specialized tools and a dose of judgement to get a picture of it— and the picture isn’t pretty.1 When it comes to the global economy, we’ve revised our estimate of potential output growth over the next few years from about 3¼ percent to 2½ percent.2 The downward revisions are across all regions and in countries important to Canadian exporters, such as the United States.