Economic Watch: Muddy Future Discussed at ATA MC&E
The economy and its effect on trucking was the topic of a general session on Sunday, hosted by American Trucking Associations’ Chief Economist Bob Costello and his guest and analyst Diane Swonk, at the ATA’s annual convention in Las Vegas. Photo: Evan Lockridge
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The economy and its effect on trucking was the topic of a general session on Sunday, hosted by American Trucking Associations’ Chief Economist Bob Costello and his guest and analyst Diane Swonk, at the ATA’s annual convention in Las Vegas. Photo: Evan Lockridge
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LAS VEGAS — There is a lot of uncertainty about where the economy is headed, but there is reason for hope that it and business conditions for trucking are slowing improving.
That was the message Sunday afternoon at the American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas during a session hosted by ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello and his guest Diane Swonk, analyst, founder and CEO of DS Economics.
According to Swonk, the American economy is at a “turning point,” meaning business conditions are expected to rebound from their current “subpar growth” for several reasons.
One, she said, consumers are “holding their own,” meaning they are continuing to spend, which helps drive a lot of freight movements. Two, job growth has been fairly strong, although Swonk believes there are still people sitting on the sidelines.
Costello said he expects job growth to decelerate at some point, while Swonk pointed out that the millennial generation (those who reached adulthood around the turn of the century) spend more money on services rather than products – a negative for trucking – and it won’t be at least until 2022 before this generation “gets over the hurdle of their student debt legacy” meaning they have less money to spend.
Add to this the fact that online shopping is growing by leaps and bounds, resulting in what Swonk called “shifting to this hybrid of bricks and clicks,” and millennials taking jobs once held by older, higher paid workers, and it’s no wonder why there is uneasiness about how some of these trends will affect trucking.
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