Could the world really avoid a recession?

LAST year markets had a terrible time. So far 2023 looks different. Many indices, including the Euro Stoxx 600, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and a broad measure of emerging-market share prices, have seen their best start to the year in decades. America’s S&P 500 is up by 5 per cent. Since reaching its peak in October, the trade-weighted value of the dollar has fallen by 7 per cent, a sign that fear about the global economy is ebbing. Even bitcoin has had a good year. Not long ago it felt as though a global recession was nailed on. Now optimism is re-emerging.

“Hello lower gas prices, bye-bye recession,” cheered analysts at JPMorgan Chase, a bank, on Jan 18, in a report on the euro zone. Nomura, a bank, has revised its forecast of Britain’s forthcoming recession “to something less pernicious (than) what we originally expected”. Citigroup, another bank, said that “the probability of a full-blown global recession, in which growth in many countries turns down in tandem, is now roughly 30 per cent (in contrast with) the 50 per cent assessment that we maintained through the second half of last year”. These are crumbs: the world economy is weaker than at any point since the lockdowns of 2020. But investors will eat anything.

Forecasters are in part responding to real-time economic data. Despite talk of a global recession since at least last February, when Russia invaded Ukraine, these data have held up better than expected. Consider a weekly estimate of GDP from the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries which account for about 60 per cent of global output. It is hardly booming, but in mid-January few countries were struggling. Widely watched “purchasing-manager index” measures of global output rose slightly in January, consistent with GDP growth of about 2 per cent.

Official numbers remain a mixed bag. Recent figures on American retail sales came in below expectations. Meanwhile, in Japan machinery orders were far weaker than forecast. Yet after reaching an all-time low in the summer, consumer confidence across the OECD has risen. Officials are due to publish their first estimate of America’s GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 on Jan 26. Most economists are expecting a decent number, though pandemic disruptions mean these figures will be less reliable than normal.

Labour markets seem to be holding up, too. In some rich countries, including Austria and Denmark, joblessness is rising—a tell-tale sign that a recession is looming. Barely a day goes by without an announcement from another big technology firm that it is letting people go. Yet tech accounts for a small share of overall jobs, and in most countries unemployment remains low. Happily, employers across the OECD are expressing their falling demand for labour largely by withdrawing job adverts, rather than sacking people. We estimate that, since reaching an all-time high of more than 30 million early last year, unfilled vacancies have fallen by about 10 per cent. The number of people actually in a job has fallen by less than 1 per cent from its peak.

Investors pay attention to labour markets, but what they really care about right now is inflation. It is too soon to know if the threat has passed. In the rich world “core” inflation, a measure of underlying pressure, is still 5-6 per cent year on year, far higher than central banks would like. The problem, though, is no longer getting worse. In America core inflation is dropping, as is the share of small firms which plan to raise prices. Another data set, from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Morning Consult, a data firm, and Raphael Schoenle of Brandeis University, is a cross-country gauge of public inflation expectations. It also seems to be falling.

Two factors explain why the global economy is holding up: energy prices and private-sector finances. Last year the cost of fuel in the rich world rose by well over 20 per cent—and by 60 per cent or more in parts of Europe. Economists expected prices to remain high in 2023, crushing energy-intensive sectors such as heavy industry. On both counts they were wrong. Helped by unseasonably warm weather, companies have proven unexpectedly flexible when it comes to dealing with high costs. In November German industrial gas consumption was 27 per cent lower than normal, yet industrial production was only 0.5 per cent down on the year before. And over the Christmas period European natural-gas prices have fallen by half to levels last seen before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The strength of private-sector finances has also made a difference. Our best guess is that families in the G7 are still sitting on “excess” savings—ie, those above and beyond what you would expect them to have accumulated in normal times—of around US$3 trillion (or about 10 per cent of annual consumer spending), accumulated via a combination of pandemic stimulus and lower outlays in 2020-21. As a result their spending today is resilient. They can weather higher prices and a higher cost of credit. Businesses, meanwhile, are still sitting on large cash piles. And few face large debt repayments right now: US$600 billion of dollar-denominated corporate debt will mature this year, compared with US$900 billion due in 2025.

Can the data continue to beat expectations? There is some evidence, including in a recent paper by Goldman Sachs, a bank, that the heaviest drag on economic growth from tighter monetary policy occurs after about nine months. Global financial conditions started seriously tightening about nine months ago. If the theory holds, then before long the economy might be on surer footing again, even as higher rates start to eat away at inflation. China is another reason to be optimistic. Although the withdrawal of domestic Covid-19 restrictions slowed the economy in December, as people hid from the virus, abandoning “zero-Covid” will ultimately raise demand for goods and services globally. Forecasters also expect the warm weather in much of Europe to continue.

The pessimistic case, however, remains strong. Central banks have a long way to go before they can be sure inflation is under control, especially with China’s reopening pushing up commodity prices. In addition, an economy on the cusp of recession is unpredictable. Once people start losing their jobs, and cutting back on spending, predicting the depths of a downturn becomes impossible. And a crucial lesson from recent years is that if something can go wrong, it often does. But it is nice to have a glimmer of hope all the same.

©2023 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved