A future tense.

Summary The activity of macroeconomic forecasting is based decisively on the description of the present situation of economies, bringing the activity of the forecaster closer to that of the statistician. Using the typology proposed by A. Desrosières, this text highlights the way in which forecasting activity articulates four different relationships to "data", on the basis of which their "realism" is assessed. It also studies some of the principles by which it is possible to account for their combination: division of labor, categories of classification used by forecasters, instruments used to forecast, temporalities of forecasting exercises.