2025 US economic outlook: Will US exceptionalism continue?

Key takeaways

• A resilient US economy has stood out against other developed nations in recent years as stronger economic growth and healthier corporate profits have fueled outsize stock market gains.
• We believe that three of the four key components of exceptional relative US economic growth—the consumer, productivity gains and a solid fiscal impulse—remain intact, while the fourth, growing labor supply, will likely come under pressure, though not enough to derail the expansion in 2025.
• Backed by a green and improving signal for the ClearBridge Recession Risk Dashboard, we are bullish on the US economy in the year ahead and expect gross domestic product (GDP) growth to deliver an upside surprise relative to current consensus forecasts.

Trump win, Fed pivot to buoy expansion

The “most anticipated recession ever” never materialized this past year, with the US economy instead achieving a soft landing. The pace of expansion appears likely to stay buoyant in 2025 as the economy rides the tailwinds of both a fiscal impulse, courtesy of Donald Trump’s election win and a Republican sweep of Congress, and a monetary impulse from the Federal Reserve’s pivot to a rate-cutting cycle.

Over the past several years, the US economy’s resilience has distinguished it from other developed economies. A key question for investors is whether this trend can continue, as stronger economic gains have translated into healthy corporate profits and outsize stock market gains. Our starting point for such analysis continues to be the ClearBridge Recession Risk Dashboard, our north star when thinking about the health of the US economy. Fortunately, the dashboard’s overall signal is currently in green/expansionary territory, and it has been consistently improving over the course of 2024 (Exhibit 1).

We believe there have been four key components of exceptional relative US economic growth over the past few years: the strength of the US consumer, productivity gains, growing labor supply and a solid fiscal impulse. Looking ahead, three of these are likely to remain intact in 2025, while the fourth, growing labor supply, should be less of a benefit, but not so much less that it could derail the US economy.

The US consumer has been a source of strength, initially powered by accumulated savings and generous government transfer payments during the pandemic. As these funds waned, a strong labor market fueled further upside as wage gains and broad job creation helped boost labor income, the largest single source of spending power for most Americans and closely tied to aggregate consumption trends. These trends appear largely intact as the calendar approaches 2025, with average hourly earnings holding up at a healthy growth rate of 4.0% year over year in October versus 4.3% coming into the year, for example.¹
 

Sticky wage gains have been a source of concern. Some worry that corporate profit margins will be crimped as businesses have to pay their workers more. We take a different view, however, believing that wages relative to a worker’s output (unit labor costs) are actually the key for profit margins. This is an important distinction because productivity gains (a worker’s output) have been robust over the past several quarters, returning to levels consistent with the 1950-2009 average as opposed to the post-global financial crisis experience. Looking ahead, we believe productivity will remain healthy given lower levels of job churn; if workers are changing jobs less frequently, these employees are more experienced, typically more tenured and more productive.