The IMF’s World Economic Outlook Update for June is not a cheerful document. Yet it does contain a cheerful point: the second quarter of 2020 should be the nadir of the Covid-19 economic crisis. If so, the challenge is to produce the best possible recovery.
The downgrade of the IMF’s forecasts since April is large, with global growth forecast at minus 4.9 per cent this year, down from minus 3 per cent in April. Next year’s growth is forecast to be 5.4 per cent. Global output is, as a result, expected slightly to exceed 2019 levels in 2021. Yet, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the gross domestic product of high-income countries would still be below levels in the first quarter of 2019. Output would also be some 5 per cent below levels implied by pre-Covid-19 growth trends.
We have been living through what the Bank for International Settlements in its latest annual report, calls a “global sudden stop”. The International Labour Organization states that, globally, the decline in work hours in the second quarter is likely to be equivalent to the loss of more than 300m full-time jobs.