from the Chicago Fed
According to participants in the Chicago Fed’s annual Economic Outlook Symposium (EOS), the U.S. economy is forecasted to expand at a pace in 2020 near the long-term average, with inflation ticking up and the unemployment rate remaining low.
In the third quarter of 2019, the U.S. economy entered the 11th year of its expansion, making this the longest expansion in U.S. history. While the nation’s real gross domestic product (GDP) is at its highest level ever, the rate of economic growth since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009 has been quite restrained. During the 41 quarters following the second quarter of 2009, the annualized rate of real GDP growth was 2.3% – somewhat above what is considered the long-term rate of growth for the U.S. economy.
The economy expanded by 2.5% in 2018 – a bit higher than the current expansion’s average. However, the economy was challenged by a significant drop in the stock market as the year came to a close. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stock market index fell dramatically between September 21 and December 24, 2018, losing 19.8% of its value. This led to concerns by some about a potential recession in 2019. Yet, back in 1966, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson wrote that “Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions,” indicating that declines in the stock market are not necessarily reliable signals for imminent economic downturns.1 The negative signals of late 2018 also turned out to be incorrect, and the market began rising again in late December. By the end of April 2019, the S&P 500 had recovered the entire drop in its value.
The annualized rate of real GDP growth was 3.1% in the first quarter of 2019, and then, in part challenged by increased tariffs and threats of additional tariffs, it decelerated to 2.0% in the second quarter and 2.1% in the third quarter. The moderation in economic growth in 2019 was largely due to slowing business investment (likely resulting from heightened uncertainty surrounding trade policy).
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Source
http://app.frbcommunications.org/e/er?s=1064&lid=6876 &elqTrackId=CE39ABFDC3F6086918E02A92A7AC1E4F &elq=bed51186ff234cb5b6464c4aac82dbdc &elqaid=16397 &elqat=1
