WEF Survey Shows That Business Leaders Are Deeply Concerned That A Global Recession Is Coming

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collape Blog. 

Are you ready for economic conditions to get even worse in 2025?  It would be difficult to find any economist that is willing to argue that global economic conditions are better in late 2024 than they were in late 2023.  The Chinese economy is deeply struggling, Europe is a mess, and four years of Bidenomics have had an absolutely devastating impact here in the United States.  Unfortunately, the outlook for 2025 is not good at all.  In fact, a WEF survey that was just released discovered that global business leaders are very concerned that a global recession is approaching…

Business leaders globally are worried about the risk of recession, labour shortages and rising inflation, despite some signs of improvement in economic conditions, a World Economic Forum survey said on Thursday.

Extreme weather events are an increasing concern, following a year of record temperatures, severe flooding and wildfires, including in major economies such as Brazil, Germany, Indonesia and the United States, according to the survey of more than 11,000 business leaders from G20 countries.

When asked to rank the top risks that they are facing over the next two years, business leaders actually ranked economic downturn number one…

Economic downturn is seen as the top risk for business leaders over the next two years, followed by labour and/or talent shortages and then inflation. Poverty and inequality ranked fourth, and extreme weather events came in fifth, the survey showed.

Business leaders tend to be relatively optimistic compared to the population as a whole, and so these results kind of surprised me.

Of course to many of us living in the United States, economic conditions are already so bad that it feels like a recession has already begun…

In August, roughly 60% of Americans said they believed the U.S. was in a recession, according to a survey from Affirm. Further, in October, more than half of Americans said they were worse off than they were four years ago, according to a Gallup poll.

If you are doing better than you were four years ago, you should consider yourself to be incredibly blessed.

Because the cost of living has been rising faster than paychecks have been, and so for most of us our standard of living has been steadily going down.

The Biden administration keeps telling us that inflation is under control, but the truth is that core consumer prices have risen for 53 months in a row…

The inflation story is far from over… no matter what The Fed or The White House claims…

For the 53rd straight month, core consumer prices rose on a MoM basis in October with the YoY pace re-accelerating to +3.33%…

Once upon a time, I actually enjoyed going to the grocery store.

But now it is so painful.

When I get to the register, I feel like asking the cashier what organ I should sell in order to pay for my groceries.

Sadly, we have reached a point where more Americans than ever are just barely scraping by from month to month.  In fact, Bank of America is telling us that the proportion of the U.S. population that is living paycheck to paycheck rose by 12 percent from early 2022 to the second half of 2024…

However you define “paycheck to paycheck,” more of us seem to be living that way.

In the Bank of America surveys, the share of consumers who said they lived from paycheck to paycheck has gradually risen, from about 35% in early 2022 to 47% in the third quarter of 2024.

Obviously, economic conditions in this country have been trending in the wrong direction for quite a while.

So what will our country look like if we keep going down this path?

At this stage, more than 20 percent of all U.S. renters already have to use “all of their regular income” just to pay the rent…

Just over one in five (22%) U.S. renters say all of their regular income goes directly to paying their rent, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey.

Working a second job is also a fairly common way for renters to pay housing costs, with 20% of renters citing that method. Nearly the same share (19%) say they have worked a job they hated to afford rent.

The bottom levels of the economic food chain are getting absolutely crushed.

In a desperate attempt to stay afloat, many Americans are piling up staggering amounts of debt.  According to the New York Federal Reserve, total credit card debt in the U.S. just reached another brand new all-time record high…

Americans’ credit card debt continues to climb, hitting a fresh record at the end of September, according to a new report from the New York Federal Reserve.

Total credit card debt rose to $1.17 trillion during the third quarter, an increase of $24 billion from the previous quarter, according to the report. It marks the highest level on record in Fed data dating back to 2003.

I have never seen U.S. consumers as financially stressed as they are right now.

And now here come more layoffs.  For example, we just learned that one of the largest private employers in the entire country has decided to send thousands of workers packing…

Sticking with the job market, approximately 8,000 pink slips are about to go out at Cargill. The privately-held company said it is laying off 5 percent of its global workforce. The job cuts are coming as one of America’s largest private companies is grappling with falling food prices.

Can anyone out there dispute the fact that we are heading in the wrong direction?

Just look around.  The middle class is coming apart at the seams, poverty is exploding all around us, homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time record high, and demand at food banks has returned to pandemic levels.  For more than a decade, I have been warning about the exact scenario that we are facing right now.

It would be a monumental task for anyone to reverse our economic momentum, but Donald Trump is certainly going to try.

After the extraordinary amount of damage that Joe Biden and his minions have done over the past four years, can Trump turn this ship in the right direction?

Let us hope so, because at this moment the entire global economy is a dumpster fire that is rapidly getting worse.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.