Top economists expect 'leaner' times ahead: Survey
Top economist believe the U.S. economy may have already seen its best days.
Only three of 21 experts surveyed by Bankrate see positive signs ahead for the economy. More than half said the tight labor market, rising interest rates and trade action could stifle wealth throughout the next 12 to 18 months.
“We just completed the second quarter with 4.2 percent growth in the U.S.," Bankrate.com's senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick told FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. "And the fact that 2018 is widely expected to be the strongest year that we have seen in some time in the sense of roughly 3 percent [growth] and whether it’s our economists weighing in, whether it’s the Federal Reserve sort of projecting out into 2019-2020, you don’t have any predictions for 3 percent growth in the coming year or the following year," he explained.
St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told FOX Business on Tuesday that the economy would end its winning streak unless productivity ramps up.
“The projections are that the economy is going to slow,” Bullard told Bartiromo. “I think that’s the right thing to base policy on that, that should be how you plan and you then hope for the best.”
Economists predict a 3.7 percent unemployment rate a year from now and nearly 162,700 jobs to be added to the economy each month over the next year, according to the survey, while also expecting the Fed to raise interest rates twice this year and the 10-year Treasury yield to climb to 3.42 percent a year from now.
However, Hamrick added that the "future crisis" would not be as severe as the 2008 financial crisis.
"I would continue to watch consumer confidence, obviously that’s very strong, retail sales strong, and business confidence," he added. "And I think, if anything, we just saw with the ISM manufacturing survey yesterday, we do continue to get a pretty strong body of commentary whether it’s ISM, the Fed Beige Book, on the level of uncertainty that has been injected into the business environment because of trade disputes and lack of certainty about how this will all be worked out,” he explained.