Economists think odds of a recession in the next year have fallen below 50%. This chart shows how consensus has changed over 18 months.

• Goldman Sachs' 12-month recession probability is hovering at 15%, about the "historical unconditional average."
• A WSJ survey showed the consensus probability of a downturn in the next year dipped below 50% for the first time since mid-2022.

Recession calls have evolved over the last two years, with forecasters digesting a wide range of conflicting signals about what might be next for the US economy.

On the one hand, the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes, business pains, and bank failures have spooked some experts, while other more upbeat indicators like consumer strength and a resilient labor market have propped up calls for a soft landing or even a no recession scenario.

The consensus among Wall Street economists has shifted again, tilting further in favor of the no recession camp, at least in the near to medium-term.

In a note this week, Goldman Sachs notes that the Wall Street Journal's latest survey of economists shows that consensus for recession odds in the next 12 months have dipped below 50% for the first time since the middle of last year. That's down from a peak above 60% in October 2022, around the time the stock market hit its most recent low and calls for an imminent downturn were on the rise amid hawkish Fed policy adjustments.

Goldman Sachs, for its part, maintains a 15% downturn probability for the year ahead, or "roughly the historical unconditional average," strategists said in a Tuesday note.

The bank's outlook hovered at 35% in October 2022, then dipped to 25% in February this year as the labor market continued to show its resilience. In July, Goldman lowered its outlook to 20% on the Fed's progress with disinflation, before finally dropping to its current level of 15% in September.

"Our Current Activity Indicator stands at +1.6% and our business survey trackers stand at 51.5 on average in September," Goldman strategists said. "We are tracking Q3 GDP growth at +4.0% and domestic final sales growth at +2.8% (qoq ar)."

Meanwhile, the Fed's own economists forecasted last month that the economy indeed could see a Goldilocks soft-landing scenario. Chicago Fed economists Stefania D'Amico and Thomas King pointed to a vector autoregression model that implied the US could avoid a recession and stamp out inflation — all while keeping positive growth.

"That model implies larger effects of monetary policy and faster policy transmission than other empirical models," the economists explained in September. "We estimate that although the majority of the effects on output and inflation have already occurred, the policy tightening that has already been implemented will exert further restraint in the quarters ahead, amounting to downward pressure of about 3 percentage points on the level of real gross domestic product (GDP) and 2.5 percentage points on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) level."