What Is Really Driving This Economy?

Since the Great Recession officially ended in mid-2009, there have been many questions about the speed, strength, and consistency of the economic recovery. Such as:

-        Why has the recovery been so slow?

-        Why has the recovery been so weak?

-        Why doesn’t it look like previous recoveries?

-        How can the economy recover if housing and consumer spending remain weak?

-        Is this even really an economic recovery?

Economists have debated and analyzed these issues over the past five years, but now there may be an answer. A growing number of experts now believe that this is an “industrial-based” economic recovery the likes of which we have not seen in over 50 years.

Transportation industry analyst Donald Broughton of Avondale Partners said in a recent interview, “We are all confused because we are witnessing the first industrial led recovery in the U.S. since 1961.” He added that, unfortunately, no one is still around who remembers what that recovery was like.

I agree with this line of thinking. At FTR (Freight Transportation Research), our data has indicated the industrial, freight-generating, portion of the economy has been out-performing the other sectors for almost two years. We recognized this was an odd occurrence and couldn’t offer a logical explanation. We didn’t think this situation would last very long and expected the industrial sector to weaken at some point. It really hasn’t, although our 2015 forecast is for the industrial sector to slow down a little while the consumer sector picks up. Mix it together and you get a much more balanced economy growing at a more typical 3% rate.

Does this mean things have returned to normal? Possibly, but if so, there is still much damage from the

Great Recession left over because we never had a Great Recovery to fix it. The labor markets are still broken, with the real unemployment rate too high, wages stagnant, and a low participation rate. The financial markets are still messed up. Credit availability is inconsistent, and society, especially the stock market, is hooked on 0% interest rates which have lasted oh so long and will be bitterly painful to let go of.

Many economists expected the housing market to lead us out of recession as it usually does. Analysts panicked when housing sputtered. This caused some people to erroneously claim that no recovery was taking place. The housing bubble burst so violently that it will take a few more years before the market returns to “normal.” Or course normal would be the early ‘90s before easier mortgages began inflating the bubble.

No, this recovery could not wait for housing to lead, so heavy industry took the lead. This is the reason freight growth has been so steady and one reason new orders for Class 8 trucks and trailers have been so high.

We can see how this plays out in the real world, by examining the flatbed (platform) trailer market. Flatbed trailers are usually the last segment to recover after a recession. Trucking fleets tend to run these trailers for more miles at the start of a recovery and delay replacing them. This creates pent-up demand and, at some point, flatbed trailer demand becomes very strong. However, flatbed trailers carry most of the materials involved in house construction, so traditionally the housing market is a significant river of flatbed trailer demand.

With housing expected to be slow in 2014, my initial Flatbed Trailer forecast was for no growth this year. The current forecast has 2014 growth coming in at 10%, and this was after a very slow Q1 due to the bad weather. How is this possible with housing starts still sluggish? Because flatbeds carry products connected to the industrial sector, and this industrial sector is running strong and leading this recovery. Can you imagine what would be happening if housing was growing at a faster clip? GDP growth could be at 5%, flatbed trailer production would be up 20%, and it would be the big, snap-back

recovery that we were told to hope for, but never materialized.

The industrial sector was so strong that flatbed freight was the strongest freight segment for most of this year. However, flatbed freight growth peaked in the summer and has dipped noticeably since then. This is not a good sign for an economy being driven by industrial markets. Is this the canary in the economic coal mine? Too soon to tell, but we need to watch this bird carefully.

This post first appeared on the FTR website.  FTR is the leader in analyzing and forecasting the commercial transportation industry.  For more information on FTR reports and services, please click here.)