Stock market woes raise a nagging fear: Is a recession near?

Fears of a recession have been mounting with the U.S. stock market appearing to be headed for its worst December since 1931 — during the Great Depression.

Wall Street's sustained slump has been fueled by investor concerns about lower corporate profits, higher corporate debt, a festering trade war between the United States and China and a broader global slowdown.

So is a U.S. recession imminent?

Not necessarily.

Plenty of economic gauges suggest that far from being derailed by a stock market that's set to suffer its first annual loss in a decade, the $20 trillion U.S. economy is barreling forward. Employers are hiring, consumers are spending ahead of the holidays and economic growth has been brisk, thanks in part to President Donald Trump's deficit-financed tax cuts.

But the economy has been growing since mid-2009 and nothing — not even what's become the second-longest U.S. expansion on record — lasts forever. As the expansion has aged, economists and business leaders are increasingly predicting that it will end within the next two years.

The fact is that recessions are a regular part of the economic cycle. A downturn won't necessarily happen in 2019. But the free-fall in stock prices could hasten the day. Tuesday's slight gain — the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 82 points, or 0.4 percent, after having lost over 1,000 over the previous two days — was barely a respite.

"While we aren't explicitly forecasting a recession next year, we wouldn't rule out a mild one," said John Higgins, chief markets economist of Capital Economics. "At the least, we expect a significant economic slowdown."

Josh Boak