No Near-term Recession Says Leading Forecast; Supercharged Consumers will Propel U.S. Economy into 2023

Recession Potential Will Grow If Federal Reserve Tightens To Control Inflation… But The Sooner The Better; California On Verge of Recovering All Jobs Lost To Pandemic

Despite real signs of stress in parts of the system, for now, consumers will carry the U.S. economy through this year and into 2023 without a downturn, according to Beacon Economics‘ latest outlook for the United States and California. The wealth created by the excessive fiscal stimulus enacted in 2020 and 2021 continues to drive a consumer consumption binge and the new forecast anticipates economic growth to look better in the second half of 2022 (when final numbers are available) than it did in the first half.

Inflation will continue to run hot, and interest rates will continue to rise as a result, but those circumstances are not recession causing, according to the outlook. Instead, expect a slow pace of overall economic growth, with weaker numbers from the more rate sensitive sectors.

“Functionally speaking, policymakers went from maximum acceleration – the stimulus – to maximum braking – tightening by the Fed – over a single year, something that would create turbulence in even the healthiest economy,” said Christopher Thornberg, Founding Partner of Beacon Economics and one of the forecast authors. “But in the near-term, while parts of the economy will remain cool due to rising interest rates, that supercharged U.S. consumer, armed with a $30 trillion increase in household wealth over the pandemic period, will keep momentum going.”

The new forecast also argues that inflation may have peaked but will not decelerate rapidly. “Until the Fed gets serious about tightening, that is reducing the money supply and raising interest rates, expect price growth to remain elevated,” said Thornberg.

Although the potential for a real recession in the nation will increase if and when the Fed applies more aggressive quantitative tightening to control inflation and push up real (rather than nominal) interest rates, the faster the Fed acts the better in order to prevent a truly deep negative business cycle, according to the forecast.

Starting in 2023, if Fed action is inadequate the United States may be looking at 3 or more years of very weak growth, with consumers in a relatively poor financial position at the end. If the Fed stamps out inflation in the near-term by aggressively reducing its balance sheet, it will drive up interest rates, cool financial markets sharply, and possibly create a modest recession next year led by consumer cutbacks. However, the nation would come out of it with a strong private sector.

In California, the state is on the brink of a milestone: recovering all the jobs it lost during the pandemic-driven downturn. While many states have already reached full recovery, as of this writing, California still has a 73,000 job deficit. However, if the economy adds the same number of jobs as it did in the latest numbers in the next data release, the state’s job count will be above water.

“California’s labor force contracted during the pandemic and employers have struggled to hire the workers they need, especially in coastal communities,” said Taner Osman, Research Manager at Beacon Economics and one of the forecast authors. “These difficulties circle directly back to the long-term affordability crisis facing the state as the labor forces in more expensive coastal areas have declined while they have grown in relatively affordable inland communities.”

View the new The Beacon Outlook including full forecast tables here.