FOMC Summary of Economic Projections, September 2026

In a previous FRED Blog post, we discussed the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) released by the FOMC this past June. In this blog post, we again use ALFRED to compare the latest set of projections released in September 2026 with several recent projections for the unemployment rate, core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, real GDP growth, and the federal funds rate.

It is important to note that these projections represent neither a committee plan nor a binding decision on future policy.

Our first ALFRED graph, above, shows the median projection for the unemployment rate for the fourth quarters of 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029. This latest set of projections is the first to include 2029, as every September the FOMC adds another year to the SEP. Most recently, as shown by the gold bar, the median FOMC participant projects that the unemployment rate will average 4.1% in Q4 2026 and remain at that level through Q4 2029. This is slightly below the median projections from June.

Our second graph shows the median projection for core PCE inflation over the same period. The median FOMC participant projects 3.4% core PCE inflation over 2026, with a return to the long-run inflation target of 2% by 2029.

Our third graph shows the median projections for real GDP growth. For 2026, real GDP growth was revised up from 2.2% in June to 2.3% in September, still shy of the 2.4% projected in March. The projection for real GDP growth in 2027 is slightly higher than it was in both March and June, revised up from 2.3% to 2.4%. Looking further ahead, the median projection for 2028 matches June’s result of 2.2% while the initial projection for 2029 stands at 2.1%, suggesting the Committee anticipates growth converging toward its longer-run trend of 2.0%

Our final graph shows the median participant’s projections of the federal funds rate. You may notice that the blue bar depicts the September 2025 vintage. This is because the SEP projections for the federal funds rate in December 2025 were exactly the same as the September 2025 vintage.

As of the September 2026 SEP, the median projection for the federal funds rate at the end of this year is 4.1%, where it remains in 2027 before falling to 3.9% by year-end 2028. These projections are higher than those in June by 0.3 percentage points this year and 0.5 percentage points in both 2027 and 2028. The fourth quarter projection for 2029 stands at 3.6%.

It’s worth noting that focusing on the median federal funds rate projection can obscure the dispersion of the individual participant projections. For example, projections for the 2029 year-end policy rate range from 2.9% to 3.9%.

How these graphs were created: Search ALFRED for “FOMC unemployment” and take the median projection. Click on “Edit Graph,” choose a bar graph, and add three bars with the same series again. Finally, select the proper vintage for each bar. Change the dates to 2026-01-01 to 2029-01-01. For the other graphs, proceed similarly with “FOMC PCE core,” “FOMC GDP,” and “FOMC federal funds rate.”

Suggested by Rehann Silvanus and Kathleen Navin.