The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the unemployment rate would rise to 5.1% in 2023.
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 53-year-low of 3.4% last month, but high interest rates and a potential recession could imperil the red-hot job growth seen in the last two years.
- The non-partisan CBO released its 10-year Budget and Economic Outlook on Wednesday, which included some striking predictions about the future of the U.S. economy and the federal government.
- The
CBO projects that the annual inflation rate will fall from 6.4% to 4.8%
in 2023, a higher inflation mark than the 3.5% number that Federal
Reserve officials said to expect for the end of 2023.
- The CBO also projected that publicly held U.S. debt would nearly double to $46.4T by 2023.
- Publicly held debt was roughly equivalent to U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022, but the CBO expects the debt-GDP ratio to hit 118% by 2033.
- Interest payments on the national debt could eclipse national spending on defense.
- The
CBO said that Social Security will probably lack funds to pay full
benefits by 2032, and will need to reduce overall benefit payments by
~20%.
