It has been especially difficult to get a read on the current state of this economy, ever since the government shutdown started last week and agencies in Washington stopped delivering economic data.

But economists and other financial professionals, whose job it is to forecast what’s likely to happen over the coming months and years, said trying to predict where this economy’s headed has been difficult all year. 

“I mean, this week, this month, this year, I have been feeling confused,” said Winnie Cisar, global head of strategy at the research company CreditSights.

A few days ago, Cisar and her team finished off a report covering the team’s outlook for next year, focused on the U.S. economy, corporate credit markets, and their expectations for key themes that could drive the market.

Cisar said it’s always challenging trying to figure out what the next 12 months are going to look like. But this year, the real challenge has been staying on top of the amount of significant policy changes from President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Just understanding deregulation, versus tax policy, versus tariffs, versus a hundred other things that have happened this year,” Cisar said.

The issue, Cisar said, is that any one of those factors has the potential to steer the economy in one direction or another.

“And then, when you add on the fact that we have not a lot of modern history of things that have happened this year that we can look back on and make educated guesses around, that makes it very, very difficult,” Cisar said.

Historical evidence helps economists make those educated guesses.

“Most econometric models take an average of how all these things interact over the last 10, 15 or 20 years,” said David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “And then you say, ‘OK, well if you see something similar again, like if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates a bit, or if you get some increase in taxes, well, how will that feed through?’” 

The problem, Kelly said, is that there’s no precedent for the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrant labor and we haven’t seen tariffs like the ones the president has imposed since the 1930s. As a result, economic models are struggling.

There are precedents economists can use to guide their forecasts now. Seth Carpenter, global chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said the tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration can help predict how new import taxes could affect the economy.

Carpenter said we also know that big inflows of immigration have boosted the economy over the last few years.

“It’s been a big positive supply shock that allowed the economy to grow faster and still have disinflation than it would have otherwise,” Carpenter said. “And so the inference then that immigrant restriction would go in the opposite direction feels like it makes a lot of sense.”

But Carpenter said those precedents have limits. For instance, the first Trump administration’s tariffs were nowhere near as high as they are now. 

“We also just have to do a lot of going by feel, trying to listen to the individual sectors of the economy, where the pain points are, how much we’re seeing prices adjust, and we’re feeling our way,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter said that means he and his team are debating more about their views — among themselves and with their clients.

“In many ways, the process now is similar to the way it normally is, but it’s a much more intense pressure testing each and every assumption that we can make, because we could be wrong,” he said.

And Carpenter said that means his forecasts these days are subject to plenty of revision.