(Save the date: RealShare Industrial 2012 comes to The Bankers Club, Miami, December 5 - 6.)

MIAMI—2013 can’t come soon enough. That’s the sentiment from Kevin J. Thorpe, chief economist at Cassidy Turley.

His assessment is clear: the U.S. economy is stuck in slow growth gear. And that, he said, means commercial real estate metrics will inevitably turn increasingly sluggish in the months ahead.

“As a general rule of the thumb, the U.S. office sector requires an average GDP growth rate of 2.5% for leasing activity to return to historic levels,” Thorpe wrote in his August 2012 U.S. Macro Forecast. “For every 50 basis point (bps) drop in GDP growth from that 2.5%-threshold, the U.S. office sector loses 7.2 million square feet of net demand—the equivalent of 48 buildings sitting empty that would otherwise be leased up.”

There is a bright side, however. The office space supply is at near historic lows. That means even minimal business expansion is improving leasing fundamentals. Practically speaking, Thorpe reports that vacancy rates for all commercial real estate sectors have fallen by an average of 20 bps midway through 2012.

“It is a bad bet to assume the U.S. recovery will turn meaningfully better in the second half of the year,” Thorpe wrote. “Given the economic drags related to government deficits, Europe’s turmoil (Spain, Greece), wheezing emerging markets—the risks are simply too high for both businesses and consumers to do anything other than maintain a defensive posture.”

As Thorpe sees it, the strongest months of job growth for 2012 are likely behind us. For the remainder of the year, he predicts unemployment will not make any notable improvement. But he also predicts a brighter picture after 2012. That, he said, is because the recent slow down has more to do with the fear that the worst-case scenario will play out than it does current economic fundamentals.

“Looking past the latest softening, the U.S. private sector is forming clear economic engines related to energy, technology, manufacturing, and housing,” Thorpe wrote. “Moreover, following the elections on November 6th, we will likely learn that policymakers will not stand by and allow the global economy to fall off a fiscal cliff. Unfortunately, the current cloud of uncertainty has virtually no chance of evaporating prior to the election. This is why 2013 can’t come soon enough.”