A rocky start to 2016 is taking its toll on the outlook for U.S. economic and job growth this year.

While the stock market has recovered much of the ground lost earlier in the year, forecasters in The Wall Street Journal’s monthly survey of economists trimmed their estimates for employment gains and for economic growth as market volatility and signs of a cautious consumer leave the economy stumbling.

The average forecast in the survey calls for growth in gross domestic product of 2.1% in the year ahead, down from an estimate of 2.4% last month. The markdown was most dramatic for the start of the year: The economy is likely to grow at a 1.3% annual pace in the first quarter, down from an estimate of 2.1% a month ago.

Economists also trimmed their estimates for job growth. They expect a monthly average of 185,000 jobs to be created in the year ahead, fewer than the 190,000 estimated in last month’s survey. That would be a slowdown from the pace over the past three months of about 210,000 jobs a month.

“Lackluster growth is a bigger risk than a full recession,” said Lynn Reaser, an economist at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Lackluster growth but no recession has been the story of the U.S. economy in recent years. It has been nearly seven years since the economy emerged from the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression. While there has been no relapse into recession, hopes for a period of strong growth have been dashed repeatedly.

The Wall Street Journal’s survey of academic, business and financial economists has shown an acceleration of recession fears since last summer, but the panel reckons that the risk of recession is lower than it was during the congressional debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 and Europe’s fiscal crisis in 2012.

The Journal surveyed 69 economists Friday through Tuesday, though not every respondent answered every question.

The odds of a recession declined slightly over the past month. The average estimate of the probability of a recession in the next year slid to 19% in this month’s survey, down from 20% last month and 21% the month before. Despite that slight decline, the odds remain nearly double their level of last summer.

Nearly half of economists see the biggest risk to the economy coming from overseas. Weakness in Europe and Japan, as well as a grinding slowdown in China, rattled financial markets.

Increasingly, these risks aren’t just economic but political. Economists are unsure how China will respond to its economic slowdown. They are unsure about an unprecedented move to negative interest rates being implemented by policy makers at the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank. And they are unsure of the ramifications if the U.K. votes to leave the eurozone.

Economists are worried about risk from the U.S. political system, too, where populist presidential candidates have pledged dramatic overhauls of U.S. policies toward trade and immigration. A plurality of economists last month said the election of businessman Donald Trump or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders could pose a significant risk to the economy next year.

The sheer range of doubt and anxiety about these political outcomes could cause consumers and businesses to pause.

“Global economic uncertainty and political uncertainty at home could stall the economy,” said Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness.

Some tentative signs of this have already emerged. Incomes have been rising faster than spending for three months as Americans increased their saving rate. U.S. businesses have seen corporate profits decline—especially energy companies still coping with the collapse in commodity prices and manufacturers facing a difficult environment for exporting. As a result they have pared back investments.

“Declining earnings for businesses may cause sizable cutbacks in outlays —including in hiring and firing,” said Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics, citing it as one of the biggest risks to the outlook.