In a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, economists are mildly more optimistic than they were a year ago.

The forecasters currently expect the U.S. gross domestic product to grow 2.70% per year, adjusted for inflation, over the next 10 years, up from 2.56% in the survey conducted a year earlier. Growth in productivity, or output per hour of work, is now expected to average 2.0%, up from the previous 1.9%. forecast (and much slower than recent spectacularly fast productivity growth.) Investors will fare better than the economists feared during the depths of the recession in the first quarter of 2008. They revised up their forecasts of the return on financial assets, with the exception of three-month Treasury bills. The forecasters see the S&P 500 returning 7.00% per year over the next decade, up from 6.50%, and 10-year Treasuries returning 4.95%, up from 4.85%. The forecasters expect that three-month Treasury bills will return 3.0% per year over the next 10 years.