Five Reasons To Be Optimistic This Year

It's not all doom and gloom out there. We're not in a recession yet, after all, and CNN’s Matt Egan laid out why the US may achieve a soft landing in 2023.

Photo Insert: Resilient hiring is one of the bright supposed spots.

Hiring remains surprisingly resilient. The economy added a robust 263,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate is just 3.7% — down dramatically from nearly 15% in the spring of 2020, Egan wrote.

The cost of living is still way too high, but the rate of inflation appears to have peaked.

Consumer prices soared by 7.1% year-over-year in November, marking the fifth-straight month of improvement and a significant cooling from 9.1% in June. It's also the lowest annual inflation rate in nearly a year.

After spiking above $5 a gallon for the first time ever in June, gas prices have plunged.

The national average for regular gasoline recently dropped to $3.10 a gallon, an 18-month low, though it has crept higher in recent days to about $3.22 a gallon. Real wages have been growing faster than consumer prices, a significant shift that could give consumers the firepower to keep spending next year.

Fed officials have signaled they could be ready to pause their inflation-fighting campaign late in the winter or early in the spring.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic