UCD was the Top Economic Forecaster for US Unemployment Statistics Last Month (posted 18/11/15)
Colm Fitzgerald, UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics, provided UCD’s forecast. Colm uses the theories and techniques that actuaries use to calculate insurance premiums and mortality rates to come up with his forecasts. He has been developing these applications or the last 11 years, including during his time as Head of Quantitative Trading in Bank of Ireland Global Markets.
The US employment report, released on the first Friday of each month by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, is an influential statistic and economic indicator. Bloomberg publishes a survey of the economic forecasts of leading economists in advance of the statistics being released.
Total US employment increased by 271,000 in October. UCD’s forecast of 250,000 was the closest submitted to Bloomberg. The median forecast was 180,000.
Colm considers actuaries to be professionals who use numbers to make judgments about the future, in contrast to accountants who use numbers to make judgments about the past. He sees his work as just one example of many other possible applications of actuarial techniques outside the more traditional actuarial fields.
