Consumers are wearing shorts and sunglasses now, but some economists are seeing signs that the days of the economic peak are shortening.
The CUNA Mutual Group’s monthly Credit Union Trends Report said consumers are feeling confident this summer with pleasantly low numbers for unemployment, gasoline prices, debt burdens, interest rates and inflation coupled with record stock and home prices, and wages that are rising and they expect will rise even more.
“This will keep credit union members borrowing and spending with credit union loan balance growth possibly exceeding 11% for the first time since 2005,” wrote Steven Rick, CUNA Mutual Group’s chief economist. “Since consumer spending accounts for 70% of total economic activity, a confident consumer will keep economic growth above 2.3% for the remainder of 2017 and into 2018.”
This is in line with CUNA’s last forecast issued in April, when they expected 2.3% GDP growth in 2017, down from a 2.5% forecast after President Trump’s inauguration, but saying they expected the 2.5% growth rate would be reached in 2018.
On Friday, CUNA maintained its 2.3% growth forecast for 2017 but lowered its forecast for 2018 to 2.3%.
“There is a lot of uncertainty right now,” said Jordan van Rijn, who recently joined CUNA as a senior economist.
“The stalled political environment is preventing fiscal stimulus, the potential trade wars with various countries, and proposed changes to health care and immigration could all slow down growth,” van Rijn said.
On Friday, the New York Federal Reserve Bank raised its “Nowcast” for annual GDP growth rates to 2% for both the second and third quarters, up slightly from its July 14 estimates of 1.9% for the first quarter and 1.8% for the second quarter. The Atlanta Fed’s July 19 estimate was 2.5% annual growth during the second quarter, down from estimates of 4% at the end of May and 3% in early July.
On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis will issue its first “advance” estimate for second-quarter GDP growth on Friday along with revisions for past quarters.
The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers found consumers were buoyant about current conditions in July, with that index at 113.2, while the index of future expectations was 80.2, down 10.1 points from its January 2017 peak.
Richard Curtin, chief economist for the surveys, found most of the drop came from Republicans: Democrats’ views of future economic conditions have remained steadily dismal. President Trump campaigned on 4% GDP growth, and premised his budget proposal on 3% growth.
“The data indicate that hopes for a prolonged period of 3% GDP growth sparked by Trump’s victory have largely vanished,” Curtin wrote.
CUNA expects credit union loan growth to be 10.8% for 2017, about the same 12-month rate recorded for May, while growth will slow to 9.5% in 2018.
Return on assets was 0.71% in May, and is expected to “remain relatively strong” at 0.70% for the year, van Rijn said. ROA hit a peak of 0.84% in 2012, and was 0.76% last year. An increase in ROA to 0.75% in 2018 is expected because of a share insurance dividend from NCUA’s Corporate Credit Union Stabilization fund.
The latest Trends Report showed car loans continued to pull ahead of houses and credit cards at the nation’s credit unions in May. New car loans were $125.8 billion in May, up 17.7% from a year earlier, while used car loans grew 13% to $196.3 billion. Auto loans share of total credit union loans grew 1.2 percentage points to 34.9%, while real estate’s share fell a like amount to 48.8%.
Credit union loan delinquency came in at 0.69% in May, below the 0.73% reported in May 2016, and below the natural delinquency rate of 0.75%. “Delinquency rates typically reach their lowest point in the second quarter of a year, so expect the ratio to begin rising in the second half,” the report said.
Other key changes from May 2016 in the report include:
- Credit card debt grew 7.6% to $53.2 billion.
- First-lien mortgages grew 9.1% to $369.4 billion.
- Second-lien mortgages grew 4.9% to $81 billion.
- Member Business Loans grew 26.2% to $71.9 billion.
- Credit unions had 111.2 million members in May, an increase of 4.4 million in the past year, including about 400,000 since April.
