CHICAGO—The US industrial markets just had another historic year, with record-setting levels of absorption and vacancy, and experts say these good times should last at least through the end of 2017. Tenants absorbed 63.6 million square feet of space in the final quarter of 2016, which propelled net absorption for the year to 282.9 million square feet, according to a new year-end report from Cushman & Wakefield. The national vacancy rate for all product types continued to decline in the fourth quarter, falling 30 bps from the prior quarter and 100 bps from the prior year to 5.5%.

As of January 2017, the industrial sector has registered 27 consecutive quarters of net occupancy gains, placing this expansion among the longest ever. It is also among the strongest, with 825.5 million square feet of net absorption for the past three years, far surpassing the 726.8 million square feet absorbed from 1997 to 1999, the strongest period of occupancy growth in the prior cycle.

But the remarkable level of activity during the past few years can't be fully explained by the usual ebbs and flows of the economy.