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The U.S. economy will grow 4.6% in 2021 after contracting 3.5% in 2020, powered by a resumption of business activity and coronavirus rescue spending, but growth will taper off to below 2% by the end of the decade, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday.
The non-partisan budget referee said its latest forecasts are based on current laws passed by Jan. 12, and do not include any executive actions or stimulus proposals by President Joe Biden’s administration.
CBO said it expects U.S. real gross domestic product growth to slow to 2.9% in 2022 and 2.2% in 2023. Real GDP will average 1.7% for the 2026-2031 period, according to the CBO forecasts.
The forecasts will form the basis for an update of the agency’s U.S. budget projections for the 2021-2031 period, which will be released later in February. Those projections form a baseline for measuring the fiscal costs of proposed legislation, such as Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus proposal.
“Over the course of the coming year, vaccination is expected to greatly reduce the number of new cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. As a result, the extent of social distancing is expected to decline,” CBO said in its economic forecast report.
The report assumes that the average U.S. unemployment rate will fall to 5.7% in 2021 from 8.1% in 2020, with the number of people employed reaching pre-pandemic levels in 2024.
But it said inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index excluding food and energy costs will rise from 1.6% in 2021 to 2.1% in 2022, above the Federal Reserve’s nominal 2% inflation target. (Reporting by David Lawder in Chicago Editing by Paul Simao)
