The US could be on the brink of slipping back into a recession. Along with Europe, the US economy has struggled during the pandemic, and surging outbreaks this winter have only added more stress to the already vulnerable market, according to Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Analytics. On CBRE's podcast The Weekly Take, Zandi discussed the current state of the global economy and gave his outlook for 2021.

"At this point in time, the US and global economies are struggling," Zandi said on the podcast. "The surging pandemic, the intensification of infections, hospitalizations and deaths, is doing some damage, some real damage, to the economy at this point. And I think I would go so far as to say that the economy is at risk of backtracking here and going back into recession."

Zandi noted the recent unemployment data as one example of the weak economy. In early December, there were 853,000 new unemployment claims, an increase of 137,000 from the previous month and the highest number since mid-September. "Now that's weekly data and it bounces around quite a bit week to week, but I think it was a pretty definitive increase and is consistent with the weakening economy and job growth we saw for November," adds Zandi.