Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank’s staff economists are no longer forecasting a recession given recent resilience in the economic data.
“The staff now has a noticeable slowdown in growth starting later this year in the forecast, but given the resilience of the economy recently, they are no longer forecasting a recession,” Powell said Wednesday during a press conference following a two-day policy meeting.
In March, after the failure of a number of U.S. regional banks, the Fed’s influential staff economists began forecasting that the economy would enter a recession later in 2023. As of the last meeting in June, the staff had maintained that forecast, according to minutes of the gathering.
But economists inside and outside the Fed have been surprised in recent weeks by the resilience of economic growth. Forecasters expect a quarterly report on gross domestic product due Thursday to show the U.S. economy expanded by an annualized 1.8% in the April to June period.