The worst U.S. recession since the 1930s has ended, but weak household spending as the labor market struggles to create jobs will slow the pace of the country's recovery, according to a survey released Monday. The survey of 44 professional forecasters released by the National Association of Business Economists (NABE) found that 80 percent of the respondents believed the economy was growing again after four consecutive quarters of declines. “The great recession is over,” said NABE president-elect Lynn Reaser. “The vast majority of business economists believe that the recession has ended, but that the economic recovery is likely to be more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines.” The current recession began in December 2007 and is the longest and deepest since the Great Depression. It was triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the resulting global credit crisis. The NABE survey predicted gross domestic product (GDP) to grow at a 2.9 percent annual pace over the second half of this year. GDP for all of 2009 is expected to shrink 2.5 percent, and GDP next year is expected to grow 2.6 percent. Much of the expected recovery was seen driven by businesses rebuilding their inventories after aggressively reducing unwanted supplies of unsold goods to match weak demand. Investment in the residential market also would add to growth, with the majority of the respondents convinced that the more than three-year housing market slump was close to ending.
