The US economy should expand a solid 4.6 percent in 2004 - helped by a surge in exports driven by the weaker dollar - and the job market should start to brighten, a panel of business economists said on Tuesday.
The National Association for Business Economics panel of 32 professional forecasters predicted in its latest survey that US payrolls should expand by 1.1 percent this year, or an average of 150,000 jobs a month.
The panel expects the unemployment rate - currently at 5.6 percent - to stand at 5.6 percent at the end of 2004, then fall to 5.3 percent at the end of 2005.
"The NABE panel overwhelmingly felt that the job market outlook would improve this year, with 31 percent saying it was already improving substantially and 59 percent saying it was on the verge of improvement," NABE said in releasing its February outlook survey.
The economists raised their outlook for this year's growth in US gross domestic product to 4.6 percent from a November forecast for an advance of 4.5 percent. The US economy grew 3.1 percent last year, according to government data.
The NABE panel said it was basing this higher forecast on its expectations that US exports would climb by 10 percent this year, up from a forecast of 7.5 percent export growth the economists made in November.
"One possible explanation for the changing outlook on trade is the weakening of the US dollar. The value of the dollar has fallen nearly 50 percent since its historic peak against the euro and that decline will continue to affect trade patterns for some time," the panel said.
It said more than 45 percent of the economists surveyed expected the dollar's slide against the euro to end around mid-year. However, about 20 percent of the panellists did not expect a trough in the dollar-euro rate until 2005 or later.
Comments
Comments are closed.