Jan Hatzius

Hatzius was born in 1968 in Heidelberg, Germany. He earned degrees from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany and the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States, and later received a DPhil in economics from the University of Oxford.⁠[1][2]

Before joining Goldman Sachs, Hatzius was a research officer at the London School of EconomicsLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a specialist social science university in central London, founded in 1895 by members of the Fabian Society. It is known for research in economics, politics and social policy, and its alumni and staff include many Nobel laureates and national leaders.Open the full entry. He joined Goldman Sachs in its Frankfurt office in 1997 and transferred to New York in 1999.⁠[2][2]

In 2004, Hatzius was named a managing director of Goldman Sachs.⁠[2]

From 2005, Hatzius served as Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. economist, succeeding William Dudley, who later became president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and was responsible for setting the firm’s U.S. economic and interest rate outlook. One focus of his research was the housing and credit market boom-bust cycle, and his forecasts drew attention for their accuracy at times.⁠[1][3][3][3]

In 2008, Hatzius became a partner of Goldman Sachs.⁠[2][1]

In 2009, Hatzius received the Lawrence R. Klein Award from Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business for having the most accurate U.S. economic forecasts for 2005 to 2008 among the roughly 50 participants in the Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey. The school said he had anticipated the global financial crisis and called the turning points for key indicators more accurately than any other leading forecaster; that year he was also named the No. 1 economic forecaster in the United States by The Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor. The award ceremony was held on October 21 at the University Club in New York, with the Nobel laureate Lawrence Klein himself presenting the award.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3][3]

The 2010 outlook he presented at the ceremony predicted that, after the rise in real GDP in the second half of 2009, growth in 2010 would remain anemic, the unemployment rate would be about 10.5 percent by the end of the year, and inflation would not be a significant threat over the next few years.⁠[3][3][3]

In 2011, Hatzius won the Klein Award again for having the most accurate forecasts for 2007 to 2010, with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers presenting the award on October 20. Lee McPheters, an economics professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, said the Goldman Sachs analysts led by Hatzius were especially accurate on interest rates and tracked the cycle better than anybody else. At the time, he was Goldman Sachs’ chief economist as well as co-head of economics, commodities and strategy research in the Americas and co-head of global economics research, and a member of the economic advisory panels of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Congressional Budget Office.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

His outlook for 2012 at the time called for below-trend growth of 2.4 percent on a fourth-quarter-to-fourth-quarter basis, with the unemployment rate rising slightly to 9.4 percent; a substantial risk of renewed recession; core inflation peaking early in the year; and likely additional quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve.⁠[4][4]

In January 2021, against the backdrop of a weak U.S. jobs report for December, Hatzius explained on a Goldman Sachs client call why his team continued to forecast above-consensus economic growth for 2021.⁠[5]

In January 2022, Goldman Sachs appointed Hatzius, then its chief economist and head of Global Investment Research, to the Management Committee; CEO David Solomon said in an internal memo that the appointment reflected the reach and impact of the research division. He was the second German, after the M&A specialist Marc Nachmann, to join the roughly 30-member leadership body. Before becoming head of Global Investment Research, he had been head of Global Economics and Markets Research.⁠[1][1][1][6][7]

In March 2022, Hatzius discussed on a Goldman Sachs podcast how policymakers were navigating the risk of stagflation. That September, he debated Olivier Blanchard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics on whether the Fed could cool an overheated labor market and bring down inflation without a sharp rise in unemployment. Hatzius argued that a large part of the inflation had been driven by temporary forces that were abating, with goods inflation clearly falling; he put the probability of recession at about 30 percent over the next 12 months and close to 50 percent over the next 24 months, but said he had become more confident that a soft landing could be achieved.⁠[8][9][9][9]

In January 2023, Hatzius and Dominic Wilson, a senior advisor in Goldman Sachs’ Global Markets Research Group, explained why they believed the United States could avoid a recession and why the economic outlook was improving in Europe and China. That November, the two discussed Goldman Sachs’ 2024 macro outlook, titled “The Hard Part is Over.”⁠[10][11]

In September 2025, Arizona State University announced that Hatzius had won the Lawrence R. Klein Award for a third time, for the most accurate U.S. economic forecasts for 2021 to 2024, having previously won in 2009 and 2011; the ceremony was held on October 15 at the University Club of New York. ASU economist Dennis Hoffman said that while many economists expected slow growth to continue in 2021, Hatzius was among the very few to anticipate a surge in GDP that year, and that his forecasts, measured by average errors for key variables, were consistently more accurate than the consensus of the 50 contributors to Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Hatzius said he accepted the award on behalf of the Goldman Sachs economics team and that it reflected the team’s shared commitment to research with out-of-consensus conclusions.⁠[12][12][12][12][12]

As of October 2026, Hatzius is ranked the No. 1 U.S. economist in Institutional Investor’s annual fixed-income survey, and he or his team has held No. 1 positions in the survey every year since 2012. He has also served on the economic advisory panels of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Congressional Budget Office.⁠[2][6]

Goldman Sachs: Official website: https://www.goldmansachs.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]