This year, the global economy has experienced an unexpectedly strong recovery. A year ago, the OECD predicted that the global economic growth rate in 2021 would be 4.2%, and in 2020 it would fall by 4.2%. It now knows that the contraction in 2020 is only 3.4%. However, even after the recession in 2020 is smaller than expected, this year’s growth rate is still expected to be 5.6%. The strong recovery is welcome. But it is also unbalanced in many ways.

Compared with expectations a year ago, the best performers are high-income countries. It is now expected that the US economy will grow by 5.6% in 2021 and the Eurozone will grow by 5.2%. a year ago, U.S. growth This year it is expected to be only 3.2% and 3.6% in the Eurozone.In short, say Latest economic outlook“The output of most OECD countries is now close to or higher than pre-pandemic levels.” Nonetheless, “the strength of the rebound has not yet fully recovered the global economy from the effects of the pandemic.”

The salient feature of this recovery is Multidimensional inhomogeneity -The relative performance of rich and poor countries, the popularity of vaccination, the degree and characteristics of policy support, labor market behavior, sectoral demand patterns, the degree of supply chain disruption, and the shortage of important resources.

Despite the economic recovery, the OECD stated that by mid-2021, global output will still be 3.5% below its pre-pandemic forecast. The point is that the loss of output is unevenly distributed. Middle-income emerging economies lose more than high-income countries, and low-income countries suffer the most, which has had a terrible impact on the world’s poorest countries.

The greater fiscal and monetary support space in wealthy countries and differences in vaccinations explain these differences. At the beginning of December, the doses received per 100 people ranged from 183 doses in China, 176 doses in the United Kingdom to 140 doses in the United States, 93 doses in India, 44 doses in China, and 5 doses in Nigeria. If the world economy is to be reopened and Covid is to be controlled, this gap must be bridged.

High-income countries are not only able to consume more freely, but they also do so in different ways.In a country that spends a lot of money Job retention planLike Germany and France, the labor force participation rate is about the same as before the pandemic. In countries where support is concentrated on the unemployed, especially in the United States, the unemployment rate is low, the job vacancy rate is high, and the participation rate is declining because many workers seem to have left the labor force.

The impact of the epidemic on the industry is also obvious. Manufacturing demand is relatively strong, and demand for face-to-face services is relatively weak. This has a strong differential impact on the needs of workers. It also creates a bottleneck in the supply chain, especially in the production of motor vehicles. A shortage of natural gas has also emerged, leading to a sharp increase in electricity prices.

The combination of shortages and strong pressures in the labor market is also emerging Unexpectedly high inflationJay Powell, who was recently appointed again as chairman of the Federal Reserve, has removed the word “transitional” from his vocabulary. Monetary policy may be tightening faster than expected a month or so ago.

Despite the good news, there will still be huge challenges in 2021, especially to curb inflation while maintaining demand. The arrival of the Omicron variant also reminds us that Covid is still a threat, and the global provision of vaccines is an obligation and a necessity. Many achievements have been made in 2021. But there is still much work to be done in 2022.