US real GDP growth in 2036?

For a far-future annual GDP growth question like 2036, the best anchor is long-run U.S. trend growth rather than any near-term cycle. Over long horizons, the economy has repeatedly gravitated toward a moderate-growth regime supported by population growth, productivity gains, and policy flexibility, with most years clustering around the high-1s to low-2s rather than at the extremes. That makes the 1.6% to 2.0% bucket the natural modal outcome, especially because sustained sub-1% growth in a single calendar year usually requires either a recession, a major demand shock, or a prolonged productivity slump.

The largest competing buckets are the low-growth and recessionary outcomes, but those should not dominate the distribution absent evidence of structural long-run stagnation. The U.S. economy has experienced frequent recessions, yet in annual terms they are still minority outcomes relative to expansion years. The more distant the year, the more uncertainty there is about demographics, productivity, AI-driven capital deepening, immigration, and fiscal regime changes, but that uncertainty cuts both ways; it does not automatically imply below-trend growth. In fact, technological progress or labor-force gains could easily keep 2036 growth in the 1.6% to 2.5% range.

Compared with the current market, I think the pricing is slightly too bearish on the central trend case and a bit underweight the possibility that the economy simply normalizes around mid-to-late-cycle historical averages. The market’s 19% on 1.6% to 2.0% is not absurd, but it looks low relative to the broad historical clustering of U.S. real growth. At the same time, the 10% assigned to 0.0% or below feels plausible enough to keep the market from being wildly wrong, since one recession year between now and 2036 is very possible. Overall, I would favor a modestly higher probability on the 1.6% to 2.0% band and a somewhat lower probability on the weaker buckets than the market implies.