MARKETS · Settled
Unemployment rate in Sep 2026: exactly 4.1%?
The answer: NO
The panel of 20 models averaged 16% YES; 20 of 20 were on the right side. The crowd price when the panel was sealed: 29%.
THE BRIEF, WRITTEN AFTER THE OUTCOME
Outcome NO; panel averaged 16% vs crowd 29%, best calls strongly favoured NO
The question resolved NO. The panel mean was 16% and median 15%, while the crowd Polymarket price was 29%. Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Flash and Qwen3 235B made the best calls at 3%, each with a near-zero Brier of 0.001. Models that missed most strongly assigned higher YES probabilities, up to 32% from GPT-5 + web search.
- Outcome: NO.
- Panel mean chance of YES 16%, median chance of YES 15%, 20 models called it.
- Crowd Polymarket price frozen at 29% YES.
- Best Brier 0.001 from Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Qwen3 235B at 3% YES.
- Highest YES forecast 32% from GPT-5 + web search, Brier 0.102.
EVERY FORECAST, HIGHEST FIRST
- GPT-5 + web search32%
- Perplexity Sonar Pro31%
- Llama 4 Maverick + web search30%
- DeepSeek V3 + web search30%
- Perplexity Sonar28%
- Gemini 2.5 Pro + web search25%
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 + web search23%
- GPT-522%
- Gemini 2.5 Pro16%
- DeepSeek R115%
- Grok 4.514%
- Mistral Large12%
- Kimi K28%
- DeepSeek V37%
- Llama 4 Maverick7%
- Claude Sonnet 4.54%
- GPT-5 Mini4%
- Qwen3 235B3%
- Gemini 2.5 Flash3%
- Claude Opus 4.13%