Experts See Recovery Momentum Despite Housing Lag

The bleak housing market won’t stop the U.S. economy from growing this year and adding jobs at a higher rate than in 2010, experts tell The Wall Street Journal. A Journal survey of 56 economists found them “increasingly optimistic about the pace of the recovery.”

As a group, they said home prices probably will decline, despite earlier predictions of a modest turnaround in 2011. Even so, they predicted that the U.S. economy will grow by more than 3.2 percent in each quarter and will add 180,000 jobs a month — almost double the job creation of 2010 and enough to make a small dent in the unemployment rate.

"The U.S. economy appears to have successfully navigated the adjustment from a recovery driven primarily from economic stimulus and inventory rebuilding to one driven by private domestic demand and rising exports," said economists at Wells Fargo & Co. "Three percent growth looks pretty good, particularly with housing stuck in low gear."