Economists are beginning to predict a near-term economic future that, until recently, would have been considered inconceivable, or at the very least implausible: The idea that the more than decade-old bull market still has room to run.
A new survey from the National Association for Business Economics found that economic experts think there is less than a 50 percent chance that a recession will take place next year, and a roughly one-in-three chance that the economy will remain positive at least through mid-2021.
NABE survey panelists said there is a 21 percent of a recession taking place by the middle of next year, a 43 percent chance of recession by the end of next year, and a 34 percent chance that a recession won’t occur until after mid-2021 at the earliest.
In an interview with CNBC, Fidelity Investments director of global macro Jurrien Timmer suggested that the current state of the expansion could be, “a mini-reflation wave within an ongoing late cycle."
I think in many ways, the way the economy has evolved in the past 12 months has been more positive than expected,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com. “If you asked people at the beginning of the expansion if it would’ve lasted more than a decade, most people would have said not,” he said. “This is one of the consequences of slower growth for longer.”
Hamrick said the Federal Reserve reversing its rate-hiking trajectory and choosing instead to lower rates three times over the course of 2019 played a big role in reversing the market plunge that took place last December. “I think that is one thing that is huge and in many ways it was an admission by the Fed that it was wrong,” he said.
Another key component is the job market, according to experts. The NABE survey was conducted before Friday’s surprisingly strong jobs report, which found that the economy added a robust 266,000 jobs in November, higher than the 187,000 economists anticipated.
“The one thing that people point to all the time is the hiring component,” said Jamie Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group. “I think that’s the real takeaway here. It’s more about the strength in hiring than anything else. As long as the labor market stays tight, then recession gets pushed off further and further,” he said.
Studies show that ordinary Americans’ sense of financial security is tightly tied to the job market, and a new Fidelity Investments survey conducted in October found that people also feel optimistic: More than three out of four of the more than 3,000 surveyed, including 85 percent of millennial and Gen Z respondents, said they think they will be better off financially next year than they have been this year.
