Augusta Technical College’s Economic Development Division hosted its third annual Mid-Year Economic Outlook event Wednesday afternoon in the Jack B. Patrick Information Technology Center Auditorium, offering audience members — largely local business leaders alongside students and faculty — a potential glimpse into the country’s financial status, with reflection on the past year.
As he has done since the talks at the school began in 2021, Atlanta Federal Bank Executive Vice President and Director of Research David Altig was the presenter, positing an estimate of what the U.S. can expect the remainder of the year, over into 2024, which, by and large, seems to be a course toward “normal.”
Last year, Altig started his lecture by saying that “inflation keeps me up at night,” and elucidated issues leading up to inflation. This year he began by noting that the recession that economists expected is yet to appear.
“Where’s the recession?… Nowhere in sight, as far as we can see,” Altig said, paraphrasing the response of Jay Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Using a chart produced by the federal government four times a year, forecasting GDP growth for the current year, the following year and the year after, Altig showed what he called “reasonably good expectations” for economic growth, roughly 1% annually.
“…And then getting back to something that looks like actually normal by the time we get to 2025,” Altig said. “If everything when everything is settled down, and we’re not getting buffeted about by extremely good events or extremely bad events that kind of move us temporarily off of the average path, the average path looks like a little bit under 2%.”
He was also quick to note that a recession is still impossible, though this more optimistic view is “pretty uniformly shared by all of the policy makers on the Federal Open Market.”
When the Fed canvasses businesses — local, national and even international — on how they’ve been faring, Altig said, the response tends to be “unusually good,” reflecting growth rates trending toward what was expected pre-pandemic.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
