NEW YORK—The U.S. economy’s growth is likely slowing as 2020 comes to a close, but a growing number of economists expect it to claw back to its pre-pandemic strength by the second half of next year. That’s the view from the latest survey of the National Association for Business Economics. It found that 73 percent of surveyed forecasters say the economy will return to its pre-pandemic level by late 2021. That reflects greater optimism than the forecasters had expressed a couple of months ago, when just 38 percent of them said they thought a full recovery could occur before 2022. In the meantime, the economy is struggling to gain traction. Measures of consumer confidence, which is critical to spending and growth, remain well below their pre-pandemic levels. On Dec. 4, the government reported that employers sharply scaled back their hiring in November, adding 245,000 jobs—the fewest since April and the …
Survey: Business Economists See Full Recovery by End of 2021
