US recession will end this year - economists
More than 90% of economists predict the US recession will end this year, although the recovery is likely to be bumpy.
The assessment came from leading forecasters in a survey by the National Association for Business Economics to be released today.
It is generally in line with the outlook from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues.
About 74% of the forecasters expect the recession – which started in December 2007 and is the longest since the Second World War – to end in the third quarter.
Another 19% predict the turning point will come in the final three months of this year and the remaining 7% believe the recession will end in the first quarter of 2010.
“While the overall tone remains soft, there are emerging signs that the economy is stabilising,” said NABE president Chris Varvares, head of Macroeconomic Advisers.
“The economic recovery is likely to be considerably more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines.”
One of the major forces that plunged the economy into a recession was the financial crisis that struck with force last autumn and was the worst since the 1930s. Economists say recoveries after financial crises tend to be slower.
Against that backdrop, unemployment will climb this year even if the economy is rebounding, the NABE forecasters predict. Companies will not be in a rush to hire until they feel certain any recovery is firmly rooted.
For all of this year, the forecasters said the unemployment rate should average 9.1%, a big jump from 5.8% last year and up from its current quarter-century peak of 8.9%. If NABE forecasters are right, it would be the highest since a 9.6% rate in 1983, when the country was struggling to recover from a severe recession.
Some forecasters thought the unemployment rate could rise as high as 10.7% in the second quarter of next year. The NABE outlook from 45 economists was conducted from April 27 to May 11.
With joblessness rising, consumers – major shapers of overall economic activity - will probably stay cautious, making for a tepid turnaround. And given the big bite the recession has taken out of household wealth, notably the values of homes and investment portfolios, consumers will probably stay subdued for some time.
But the NABE forecasters also predict the economy’s overall performance in 2009 will be rotten.
The economy should contract by 2.8% this year, the forecasters said in updated projections. That is worse than the 1.9% drop they forecast in late February. If they are right, it would mark the worst annual contraction since 1946, when economic activity fell by 11%.
Still, the forecasters believe the worst is already behind the country in terms of lost economic activity.
The economy shrank at a 6.1% annualised pace in the first three months of this year, on top of a 6.3% decline in the final three months of last year, the worst six-month performance in 50 years.
For the current April-June quarter, the NABE forecasters believe the economy will shrink at a pace of 1.8%. After that, the economy should start growing again – at a 0.7% pace in the third quarter and a 1.8% pace in the fourth quarter.
