About four months Since the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the United States was officially in recession, it has been a weird economic recession and recovery.The stock market has Rejoice Since the recession started in February; Increase in disposable income Even if millions of Americans are unemployed; unemployment has rebounded a lot Faster than economists expected.

But as winter approaches and what will happen to COVID-19, there is still a lot of uncertainty The case started ticking again. Although some signals may be improving, many economists are still not optimistic about the speed at which we return to the pre-pandemic economic trajectory.

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in May, FiveThirtyEight and the “Global Market Project” of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business conducted a two-week survey of more than 30 quantitative macroeconomists. We ask economists to predict the trend of various economic indicators. After ten rounds of problems, it is clear that from certain indicators, especially the unemployment rate, economists have become more optimistic about the speed of recovery. However, this optimism has not translated into greater confidence, and we believe that we will soon return to normal economic conditions. In the latest round of investigationEconomists conducted a survey on October 9-12. They collectively believe that the US economy will not truly return to normal until 2022 or later. This probability is 66%.

He said: “We usually think that the economic recession is like a’squally wind’, and now we are in a slow stage of rebounding.” Jonathan Wright, Is a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, and he has been negotiating the design of the survey with FiveThirtyEight. “It is always easier to say that recovery will be a slow process than the recent trend. Therefore, it makes sense that although economists are more optimistic about the short-term outlook, they still basically believe that the damage will take a long time to be repaired. .”

We investigated several questions raised in almost every round of the survey to understand the situation from the end of spring to the present. Regarding a question-about the unemployment situation in December 2020-economists have become more optimistic. The average estimate of the unemployment rate in December fell from 12.8% in late May to 7.4% in this round.

Of course, an important reason for optimism is that in the past few months, workers have returned to work much faster than economists initially expected. The unemployment rate in September was 7.9% -From below 14.7% in April. Therefore, in a sense, the current forecast of 7.4% for December is actually very pessimistic-because it means that, on average, economists believe that the unemployment rate is likely to fall within the next three months. One percentage point.

At the same time, when it comes to GDP in the fourth quarter, economists’ forecasts are basically back to where they started. In early June, economists expected the survey’s GDP to grow by 4.2% with a relatively wide confidence interval. In the last round, the prediction only slightly improved to 4.9%, and the confidence interval is also very wide, which shows that they have no more confidence in the results in the following months.

Of course, it is worth noting that their forecast for the third quarter GDP was significantly higher throughout the summer. This may be part of the reason. They do not expect more between the last two quarters of the second quarter GDP. Quarter-on-quarter growth. year. But please note that economists are still uncertain about the economic situation at the end of the year. Allan TimmermannProfessor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, also consulted with FiveThirtyEight during the investigation. He said that the average uncertainty range of economists around their point estimates has remained basically unchanged since June, which is “very unusual.” He said: “Usually, in such a long time frame, the uncertainty will be greatly reduced.”

Timmermann attributes the uncertainty to the fact that people still know very little about how the pandemic develops. He said: “The uncertainty about the trajectory of the virus and its impact on the hotel, travel, entertainment, dining out and other service industries is still the most important issue that has not yet been truly resolved.” “Many companies hope that this virus will be able to It lasts, but even at this point, it is still unclear how long the pandemic will last.”

This may be why the long-term estimates of economists are still as sluggish as they were at the beginning of the survey. In each round, we asked them when the GDP will return to pre-pandemic levels. Earlier, economists thought that the probability that we had the earliest chance to return to this point before the first half of 2022 was 67%. In the last round, this outlook remained basically unchanged.

Economists still believe that recovery will be slow

Experts estimate when real GDP will reach its pre-crisis level (Q4 2019)

	second round	Tenth round	the difference
Earlier than the first half of 2021	2%	1%	-1
First half of 2021	11	8	-3
Second half of 2021	21 years old	25	+4
First half of 2022	twenty two	26	+4
The second half of 2022	20	20	0
First half of 2023	12	11	-1
The second half of 2023	7	5	-2
After the second half of 2023	6	4	-2

At the same time, Wright believes that more bad news awaits us-partly because of Congress Still not taking action to pass the second round of fiscal stimulus measures,economist Keep telling us used to be Boost This Economic recovery. He said: “The combination of delayed fiscal stimulus measures and bad news about the virus may indeed lead to two dips later this year.”

Neil Paine contributed research.