BY CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
AP ECONOMICS WRITER
WASHINGTON (AP) — For much of the economy’s fitful and sluggish six-year recovery from the Great Recession, analysts have foreseen a sunnier future: Growth would pick up in six months, or in a year.
That was then.
The latest Associated Press survey of leading economists shows that most now foresee a weaker expansion than they had earlier. A majority of the nearly three dozen who responded to the survey predict tepid economic growth, weak pay gains and modest hiring for the next two years at least.
Nearly 70 percent said they thought the economy’s growth would remain below its long-run average of 3 percent annually through 2017. The economy hasn’t attained that pace since 2005.
And if they’re right, don’t expect much of a pay raise: Fifty-eight percent of the economists think wage increases for the next two years will remain stuck below a long-term annual average of 3.5 percent.
What’s more, if growth doesn’t pick up from its modest post-recession pace of 2.2 percent a year, nearly six in 10 expect hiring to fall to an average of 175,000 jobs a month or below, down from its pace of 243,000 jobs a month for the past year.
At the start of the year, many economists thought falling gas prices and strong hiring would finally produce 3 percent economic growth for 2015 as a whole.
“We no longer have reason for optimism that the economy is going to accelerate,” said Mike Englund, chief economist at Action Economics. “The real question is, when is the next downturn coming?”