The Associated Press reports that “most business economists think the U.S. economy could avoid a recession next year, even if the job market ends up weakening under the weight of high interest rates.”
The survey, conducted by the National Association for Business Economics, concluded that only 24 percent of respondents “said they see a recession in 2024 as more likely than not.”
The AP writes that “most of the surveyed economists expect inflation to continue to slow in 2024, though many say it may not get all the way down to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% until the following year.
“Of course, economists are only expecting price increases to slow, not to reverse, which is what it would take for prices for groceries, haircuts and other things to return to where they were before inflation took off during 2021.
“The median forecast of the surveyed economists called for the consumer price index to be 2.4% higher in the final three months of 2024 from a year earlier. That would be milder than the inflation of more than 9% that U.S. households suffered during the summer of 2022.”
These predictions, the story says, “imply the belief that the Federal Reserve can pull off the delicate balancing act of slowing the economy just enough through high interest rates to get inflation under control, without snuffing out its growth completely.”
KC’s View:
Again, not everybody is feeling the effects of a steadily improving economy. But the news seems to be more good than bad, and at least appears to be sustainable.
Of course, anything can happen – especially because there is so much tumult in the world.
And the idea that 75 percent of any group of economists would generally agree on anything is a little scary. (Maybe this is when we should start to panic?)
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