IMF predicts it will take 2 years for world economy to return to end-of-2019 levels

OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images
(Image credit: Gita Gopinath.)

The International Monetary Fund's already-gloomy forecast just got gloomier.

In an update on the World Economic Outlook, the IMF predicted — largely due to the coronavirus pandemic — the world's economy would contract not by three percent, as previously estimated in April, but by 4.9 percent, leading to a $12 trillion hit. Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, said there would be a fall of living standards in 95 percent of the world's countries this year, and forecasts for every Group of Seven nation, as well as the leading developing nations, worsened.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.