Continued slow economic growth in developed countries, and slowing growth in key emerging markets, will keep the credit outlook of most corporate sectors unchanged over the next 12-18 months, says Moody’s Investors Service.

The rating agency reports that for the first time since it began tracking outlooks for business conditions among non-financial corporate industries, it saw no net changes in its roster of positive, stable and negative industry outlooks during the second quarter of 2013.

“With supply-related investments tempered by economic uncertainty and relatively high unemployment and low income growth suppressing demand, there is little impetus for change,” says Moody’s managing director, Mark Gray, the report’s co-author. “During the second quarter, we changed our industry outlooks for just two sectors among the 57 we track worldwide, while about two-thirds of all non-financial corporate sector outlooks remained stable.”

Moody’s reports that it did change its outlook for the U.S. lodging and cruise industry to positive from stable in the most recent quarter; but, it says, this reflects the sector’s reluctance to build new hotel rooms, rather than any real improvement in business conditions. Additionally, its outlook for the European tobacco industry went to stable from positive due to slowing profits amid tight consumer spending and a growing challenge from e-cigarettes.

“The roster of positive and negative industry outlooks demonstrates offsetting trends with no macroeconomic correction on the horizon,” Gray says. “Our outlook for the U.S. newspaper sector, for example, will continue to be negative as the industry struggles with the ever-increasing digitization of information, but that very phenomenon contributes to the growth we see in the U.S. wireless sector.”

“In general, the stability we have seen since mid-2012 reflects a period of economic stasis, rather than comfort,” Gray says. “Still, today’s apparent calm continues to indicate a certain macroeconomic foreboding, even as European jitters ease and the U.S. housing market continues to spearhead the recovery there.”