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The U.S. economy's shock absorbers kicked in within days of one of the worst natural disasters in its history, offering hope that the massive jolt to the country's energy and transportation systems won't produce a long-lived, serious economic contraction.

The release of emergency oil and gasoline from global stockpiles, created in the 1970s to counter supply interruptions, sent crude-oil prices down to about pre-hurricane levels in European trading. Long-term interest rates fell despite the prospect of higher inflation, cushioning home buyers and businesses. Temporary-help agencies began to place some workers displaced by the storm. New Orleans's main newspaper, the Times-Picayune, kept publishing on the Internet when printing on paper was impossible. Computerized logistics enabled railroad CSX Corp. to reroute freight normally exchanged with Western railroads at New Orleans to be sent north.

Hurricane Katrina is the biggest test in years of the economy's resilience. But recent history offers encouraging, though by no means definitive evidence of the U.S. economy's ability to bounce back from shocks. Economic growth has become significantly less volatile during the past two decades, a trend some economists dub "the Great Moderation."

The past five years have witnessed a burst stock bubble, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a doubling in crude oil prices. Yet the economy, after a mild recession in 2001, has embarked on a solid expansion with little inflation. Katrina came at a time when the economy was in solid shape. In August, the unemployment rate fell to 4.9%, a four-year low, from 5% in July, and nonfarm payrolls grew a respectable 169,000, the Labor Department said Friday.

"We expect the trend in growth will prove more resilient than is now widely feared," UBS Securities analysts told clients Friday.

Employment and output are likely to take a sizable hit in the next few months; the question is the duration and severity of the blow. Economists surveyed last week by Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, a St. Louis forecasting firm, said the storm would result in growth of only about 3.5%, at an annual rate, in the second half of the year, down from pre-storm expectations of 4%. It grew 3.6% in the first half.

And the economy does have some worrisome vulnerabilities. The storm hit when world oil producers and U.S. refiners were operating near capacity and they remain highly sensitive to any loss of supply. Higher gasoline prices will act like a tax on consumers who are already stretched: In July their saving rate turned negative as spending exceeded income. Spending might be further hurt if consumer confidence erodes.

As a result, some analysts still believe the economic impact might be severe. "What we're witnessing now is going to turn out to be a really huge shock," said Stephen Cecchetti, an economist at Brandeis University. Businesses may also find it hard to adapt to shifts in spending caused by higher energy prices, much as Detroit found it hard to shift to smaller cars in the 1970s.

But there are several factors in the economy's favor. It's more energy-efficient: The gross domestic product has more than doubled since 1979, but petroleum consumption has risen just 9%, according to the Energy Department. Policy makers have reduced, rather than increased, regulatory constraints on supply. In the 1970s, gasoline price caps and other regulations created shortages and waiting lines. Last week, the federal government temporarily eased environmental and transportation regulations so existing gasoline inventories could reach U.S. customers more easily.

The release of oil and gasoline from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and similar stockpiles in Europe has helped contain the rise in oil prices. Benchmark Brent crude oil for October delivery fell $1.22 in London yesterday to $64.84, around where it stood before Katrina. U.S. markets were closed for Labor Day. Wholesale gasoline prices fell sharply Friday from midweek peaks though they remain well above pre-storm levels due to Gulf Coast refinery closures.

The growth of the temporary-staffing industry has helped redeploy workers displaced by both economic and weather events. Terri Blue Edwards, 41, stayed behind in New Orleans with a sister who refused to leave. By Thursday, she says, she, her 23-year old son and her sister waded out of a building in chest-high water, wandered along a scorching-hot highway and found their way to an abandoned dairy truck, which they and more than two dozen others, packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and rode to Austin.

Another son raised money to fly her to Huntsville, Ala., she says, to be reunited with her husband, Leon, who had left New Orleans with elderly parents before the storm. Mr. Edwards was a maintenance engineer in a municipal building, earning $13 an hour. Ms. Edwards didn't work. She says she has health problems but she's going to work now to make ends meet.

By Saturday, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards had landed $7-an-hour jobs at a Huntsville manufacturer through Adecco SA, a Swiss-based temporary staffing company. Mr. Edwards says he was making nearly twice as much in New Orleans. But the job "came right on time," he says. "You need a job to survive."

The transportation system is proving to have some flexibility. The storm wiped out large sections of CSX's tracks and bridges along the Gulf Coast. But within a couple of days, the railroad, based in Jacksonville, Fla., was rerouting freight north, thanks to advances in information technology and deregulation that enable it to reroute shipments in a quarter of the time it would have taken two decades ago. Separately, the lower Mississippi's maritime hub continued to recover as the Coast Guard reopened its main shipping channel to ocean-going vessels Saturday.

The development of new financial instruments has ameliorated the risk that regional stresses could trigger local bank failures. In Baton Rouge, American Gateway Bank, a small regional lender, sells about three-quarters of the mortgages it underwrites to larger banks like J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. or Bank of America Corp., who package the loans into larger, diversified pools of credit sold to investors around the world. That has helped keep credit flowing to real estate even after disaster struck less than 80 miles away.

Oil shocks in the 1970s became embedded in wages and prices, eventually requiring the Fed to raise interest rates dramatically, triggering deep recessions. But those drastic actions eventually cemented its credibility, and in recent years workers and companies haven't responded to higher oil prices or easy money by immediately pressing for higher prices and wages. "One of the benefits of having that credibility is it increases [the Fed's] ability to...stabilize the economy and insulate it from major shocks like this," said J. Alfred Broaddus, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va.

While the Fed is unlikely to cut rates, it may choose not to raise them at its Sept. 20 meeting as had been previously expected. The Fed has raised its short-term-rate target to 3.5% from 1% in the past 14 months.

Fed officials say it's too soon to assess the storm's impact on interest-rate moves. Even so, long-term interest rates have declined in anticipation that the Fed will raise rates more slowly or not as high. By keeping mortgage rates down, that, in turn, offered support to the still-strong housing market.