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The confidence of a group of business economists in the american economy is declining, a decline driven by the possibility of a new vaccine-resistant vaccine COVID-19[female[feminine variant.
A survey released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics shows that its members expect the economy to grow 5.6% this year, down sharply from their previous estimate of 6.5%. Respondents predicted that the economy would grow 3.5% in 2022.
“NABE Outlook panelists have moderated their expectations regarding the outlook for economic growth in 2021 since May,” said David Altig, president-elect of NABE and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta .
Economists are increasingly pessimistic about the outlook for growth: more than half of those polled – 58% – said risks to the economy were on the downside, down from just 15% in May. Only 16% of those polled said risks to the outlook were on the upside, down from 56% in May.
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Pandemic-related issues continue to dominate the list of potential risks: nearly two-thirds of economists said they saw the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants of COVID-19 as the greatest threat, while 9% said identified a slowdown in vaccination.
9% said they worried about the possibility of a “big tax agenda” as Democrats drew up a massive $ 3.5 trillion spending bill, while 5% of those polled said the most big downside risk was fiscal policy inaction or deadlock.
On the flip side, about 44% of those surveyed identified faster vaccine rollout as the biggest upside risk to the economy, followed by a program of infrastructure spending (14%) and stronger global growth (12%).
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Other experts also lowered their forecasts as the United States faced a wave of COVID-19 cases, mainly due to the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. The OECD predicted on Tuesday that U.S. GDP would grow 6 percent in 2021. That’s a drop of almost a percentage point from May, when the Paris-based organization predicted GDP would grow by 6, 9% this year.
As the United States made solid progress on immunization – 76.5% of adults received at least one injection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – and infections began to drop, cases rebounded over the summer.
The United States averages about 140,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day with about 1,000 deaths, according to CDC data.
Although breakthrough infections do occur in people who are vaccinated, they tend to be much less dangerous.
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