NABE headquarters at 1920 L St. Photo by Google Streetview

WASHINGTON, DC–Forecasting when the next recession will begin has become the business community's favorite parlor game. Many groups and individuals have pinpointed the year 2020 as the likeliest ETA for the next recession. Now the influential National Association for Business Economists have weighed in to give us a bit more runway for positive growth.

Two-thirds of the business economists surveyed expect the next recession to begin at the end of 2020 while one-third expects that there will not be a recession until 2021 or later.

Industrial Is Driving Current Growth

Another finding from the report that should come as no surprise to the CRE community: industrial is driving current growth. “Despite concerns over trade policy, NABE Outlook panelists are slightly more optimistic about the US economy in 2018 than they were three months ago, especially regarding prospects for the industrial sector of the economy,” said NABE Vice President Kevin Swift, chief economist, American Chemistry Council.

Growing Trade Concerns

On the downside many of the economists do have trade concerns, as Swift noted. Half of survey respondents moderately increased their inflation forecasts as a result of trade policy changes and over half reduced their GDP growth forecasts for 2018 and nearly 80% did so for 2019.

Nearly half (47%) of the panelists report they lowered their forecasts for 2018 by 0.25 percentage points or less, while 4% of panelists reduced their forecasts between 0.26 and 0.5 percentage points. Only 4% of respondents lowered their forecasts in excess of 0.25 percentage points. On the other hand, 14% of panelists boosted their GDP growth forecasts for this year by 0.01 to 0.25 percentage points. The remaining 35% of panelists made no change to their 2018 GDP growth forecasts.