100% of Major Economist Group Say US Is in Recession

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 13, 12:51PM EDT · Published Apr 12, 7:09AM EDT

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100% of Major Economist Group Say US Is in Recession — © Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

Not a large fraction, or even a majority. 100% of the economists at the widely regarded NABE (National Association of Business Economists) say the U.S. is already in a recession–a very rare consensus.

The 45 economists who are members of the association were polled from April 3 to April 7. The NABE Outlook Survey was first released in 1965. NABE President Constance Hunter, CBE, chief economist, KPMG, said “NABE Outlook Survey panelists believe that the U.S. economy is already in recession and will remain in a contractionary state for the first half of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic severely restricts economic activity. The consensus is real GDP declined at an annualized rate of 2.4% in the first quarter of 2020, and will shrink at an annualized rate of 26.5% in the second quarter”

The group was more optimistic than many other financial experts as it looked at the second half of the year. As the spread of the pandemic eases, they expect GDP growth to be 2% in the third quarter of 2020, 5.8% in the fourth, and 6% in the first quarter of 2010. The group pointed out that there was little agreement among the group on the exact figure in the forecast.

The median figure for the unemployment rate among those polled was 12% in the second quarter. This is worse than the 10% in October 2009, the depth of The Great Recession. The median expectation for unemployment at the end of this year is 9.5% and 6% by the end of next year.

The reason for a lack of consensus is almost certainly based on how much of the economy will be “reopen” and how soon. Many medical experts believe that if the economy is open too soon, the infection will begin to spread again, and U.S. deaths will rise back into the tens of thousands in the latter part of this year.

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More than most NABE forecasts, the current one can be characterized as a guess.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.