1 IMF sees global recovery weakening (BBC) The global
economic recovery is weakening as government policies have failed to restore
confidence, the International Monetary Fund has said. It added that the risk of
further deterioration in the economic outlook was "considerable" and
had increased. The IMF downgraded its
estimate for global growth in 2013 to 3.6% from the 3.9% it forecast in July.
One of the biggest downgrades was to the UK economy, which
the IMF expects to shrink by 0.4% this year. In response to the downgrade, the
UK Treasury highlighted the fact that the IMF had "repeated its advice
that the first line of defence against [slowing growth] should be to allow the
automatic stabilisers to operate, monetary policy easing and measures to ease
the flow of credit - all of which the UK is doing". The fund's forecast for global growth this
year has been lowered to 3.3% from 3.5%.
2 IMF cuts India growth forecast (The Wall Street Journal) In
a speech last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India’s economic growth
could “collapse” to about 5% per year if the country can’t break free of a
“policy logjam” and make advances in everything from manufacturing output to
infrastructure development to agricultural growth.
By that definition, the International Monetary Fund has just
said India is in the process of collapsing. The IMF’s “World Economic Outlook,”
forecast 4.9% gross domestic product expansion in India in 2012, a downward
revision of 1.3 percentage points from the July forecast — the worst mid-year
recast by the IMF for any major economy. The report said: “India’s activity
suffered from waning business confidence amid slow approvals for new projects,
sluggish structural reforms, policy rate hikes designed to rein in inflation,
and flagging external demand.”
India’s hard times aren’t out of step with the world. The
IMF’s growth forecast for advanced economies including the US, Germany and UK
is 1.3% for 2012; Brazil’s forecast of 1.5% represents a one percentage point
downward revision. But sub-5% growth in India has some very perilous
implications for the country. Indeed, anything below 6% growth can lead to
rising unemployment in a nation where millions of young people are joining the
workforce each year. The Kelkar Committee, an expert panel that recently
submitted recommendations to the finance ministry on fiscal policy, said growth
of 6% could translate into 2.4% employment growth, too slow to keep up with
2.5% labour force growth.
3 Jobs quality is dropping, too (Moira Herbst in The
Guardian) It's heartening to hear that the unemployment rate edged down to 7.8%
last month. But we need to look beyond the sheer quantity of jobs being created
and into the quality of those jobs – something neither presidential candidate
seems very interested in talking about. Buried in the new jobs report is
evidence that a disturbing trend continues: the creation of more part-time
jobs, many of them low-wage, taking the place of solid middle-class careers.
Positions in sectors like manufacturing continued to decline
last month, replaced by new jobs in the healthcare, warehousing and retail
industries. A lot of these jobs don't allow workers to rack up enough hours to
earn healthcare benefits – let alone break out of poverty. The key data in the
new report can be found in a table called "A-8". It shows that more
workers are in stuck in part-time jobs because their hours were cut back or
they're unable to find full-time positions. The number of workers in this
category shot up to 8.5 million in September – an increase of 581,000 from last
month.
It's distressing to think that after 20th-century labour
struggles won the battle for the 40-hour work week, the 21st-century struggle
is a fight for enough working hours to make a living wage. That's not what I'd
call progress. Here's another sobering number: since September 2007, the number
of Americans working full-time has declined by about 5.9 million, while the
number working part-time jobs has increased by 2.6 million.
No comments:
Post a Comment