NEW YORK (AP) — Most business economists think the U.S. economy could avoid a recession next year, even if the job market ends up weakening under the weight of high interest rates, according to a survey released Monday.
Only 24% of economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics said they see a recession in 2024 as more likely than not. The 38 surveyed economists come from such organizations as Morgan Stanley, the University of Arkansas and Nationwide.
Such predictions imply the belief that the Federal Reserve can pull off the delicate balancing act of slowing the economy just enough through high interest rates to get inflation under control, without snuffing out its growth completely.
…
High rates work to slow inflation by making borrowing more expensive and hurting prices for stocks and other investments. The combination typically slows spending and starves inflation of its fuel. So far, the job market has remained remarkably solid despite high interest rates, and the unemployment rate sat at a low 3.9% in October.
It should be clearly stated that recession is a technical term with a specific meaning, not a general term for a rough economy. Not all tough economic times are recessions. It is not at all a contradiction for lots of people to be struggling and for a recession to not be happening. This is not economists saying that everything is hunky dory and that people have no reason to complain, only that the specific phenomenon that is a recession is not occurring right now.
Edit: Just to put it explicitly, a recession is generally defined as two or more successive quarters in which GDP contracts rather than growing.