US real GDP growth in 2033?

With no fresh cycle-specific news, the best guide is the long-run structure of US growth. By 2033, growth is likely to be shaped more by demographics, trend productivity, and the post-2020 policy regime than by any single year’s business cycle, which tends to pull the center of gravity toward modest expansion rather than very fast growth. A 1.1% to 1.5% outcome is a natural modal range because it is close to the kind of subdued trend growth that emerges when labor force growth is slower and investment returns normalize after a strong prior decade.

That said, the distribution is not tightly locked to that bucket. The 1.6% to 2.0% range has real appeal because the US has repeatedly beaten pessimistic long-run growth forecasts when productivity improves, capital deepening continues, and AI-related gains diffuse more broadly. If anything, the most important upside risk is that trend productivity in the late 2020s and early 2030s proves durable, which would shift outcomes upward into the second or third bucket more often than a purely extrapolative forecast would suggest.

Against that, the 0.0% or below and 0.1% to 0.5% buckets look too extreme absent a major structural shock. A recession can happen in any given year, but the market for a specific calendar year far out in the future should not overweight outright contraction nearly as much as near-term macro traders often do. The current pricing looks slightly compressed toward the safest middle range, while my view is that the 1.1% to 1.5% bucket is still the single most likely outcome but not by as wide a margin as the market implies, leaving room for the 1.6% to 2.0% bucket to be underappreciated.