There's been so much talk about a possible recession in the past few years. It's enough to make you wonder if we're heading for another 2008 scenario. But let's take a peek at the most recent expert predictions to reassure you that history won't be repeating itself anytime soon.

Hey, did you catch what Jacob Channel, the Senior Economist over at LendingTree, said? He mentioned that the economy is holding up pretty well lately.

““At least right now, the fundamentals of the economy, despite some hiccups, are doing pretty good. While things are far from perfect, the economy is probably doing better than people want to give it credit for.””

— Jacob Channel, Senior Economist at LendingTree

That's probably why a new survey from the Wall Street Journal found that only 39% of economists believe there will be a recession in the coming year. It's a significant drop from the 61% who predicted a recession just a year ago.

It looks like most experts are saying we probably won't have a recession in the next year. One big factor they're looking at is the current unemployment rate. We can check out the numbers and compare them to data from Macrotrends, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Trading Economics. Based on what we see, it's obvious that the unemployment rate right now is still pretty low based on the graph below.

The light-orange bar here represents the average unemployment rate since 1948, which hovers around 5.7%. The darker-orange bar highlights how, post the 2008 financial crisis and the housing market crash, the rate peaked at 8.3%. These figures are significantly higher compared to the latest unemployment rate this January, indicated by the blue bar.

To figure out if more people will be out of work, let's check out the graph below. It breaks down the predictions for unemployment in the next three years compared to the usual rate.

Well, economists are saying that the unemployment rate won't get anywhere near the usual long-term average in the next three years. Remember when it hit 8.3% during the last market crash? They're saying it'll be even lower than that.

If these predictions turn out to be true, there could be folks losing their jobs next year. It's always a difficult situation when someone is out of work, affecting not just them but also their circle of friends and family. The real concern here is whether the number of job losses will reach a point where it leads to a surge in foreclosures that might destabilize the housing market.

Looking forward, it seems the unemployment rate is expected to remain lower than the 75-year average. This suggests that you probably won't see a surge of foreclosures that could significantly affect the housing market.

Bottom Line

From what most experts are saying these days, it looks like we probably won't be seeing a recession in the coming year. They're also not predicting a significant increase in the unemployment rate. So, it seems like there's no need to worry about a sudden surge of foreclosures that could potentially lead to a housing market crash.