Xinhua, New York :
Global economic growth will accelerate modestly in 2015 and will slow down in the long term due to labor force shortage, a US research organization said Wednesday.
The world’s economic growth, which stands at 3.2 percent for 2014, will moderately improve to 3.4 percent in 2015, Bart van Ark, chief economist of the New York-based Conference Board, said at a news briefing.
Although the moderate growth rate is less than what might have been hoped for, “this doesn’t mean that we are predicting a kind of Armageddon ahead of us,” Van Ark said.
The slower growth outlook was attributed to modest job growth, weak business investment and depressing productivity, he said, adding that most of the global growth acceleration would come from mature economies.
The research group expected the U.S. economy to grow at 2.6 percent in 2015 from 2.2 percent this year, which is at the low end of market consensus of closer to 3 percent.
“We feel that a soft improvement in the United States might just bring the economy back to the sort of 2.5-and-3-percent growth range,” van Ark said.
The Conference Board predicted that growth in the eurozone would improve to 1.6 percent in 2015 from 0.9 percent in 2014, while Europe as a whole is expected to grow by 2 percent next year.
From a longer-term perspective, the Conference Board predicted that annual global growth would average 3.3 percent from 2015 to 2019.
“Beyond 2020, we’ll see slower growth,” van Ark said, adding that it is mostly “driven by the fact that the contribution of the labor force in economic growth is going to decline.”
He said labor force shortage could also become a problem emerging markets would face in the future.
“We also see that in emerging markets, which now still benefit from what economists called demographic dividend-a lot of young people added to the labor force, the force will gradually begin to decline, not overnight, but I think into the next century,” the economist said.
Global economic growth will accelerate modestly in 2015 and will slow down in the long term due to labor force shortage, a US research organization said Wednesday.
The world’s economic growth, which stands at 3.2 percent for 2014, will moderately improve to 3.4 percent in 2015, Bart van Ark, chief economist of the New York-based Conference Board, said at a news briefing.
Although the moderate growth rate is less than what might have been hoped for, “this doesn’t mean that we are predicting a kind of Armageddon ahead of us,” Van Ark said.
The slower growth outlook was attributed to modest job growth, weak business investment and depressing productivity, he said, adding that most of the global growth acceleration would come from mature economies.
The research group expected the U.S. economy to grow at 2.6 percent in 2015 from 2.2 percent this year, which is at the low end of market consensus of closer to 3 percent.
“We feel that a soft improvement in the United States might just bring the economy back to the sort of 2.5-and-3-percent growth range,” van Ark said.
The Conference Board predicted that growth in the eurozone would improve to 1.6 percent in 2015 from 0.9 percent in 2014, while Europe as a whole is expected to grow by 2 percent next year.
From a longer-term perspective, the Conference Board predicted that annual global growth would average 3.3 percent from 2015 to 2019.
“Beyond 2020, we’ll see slower growth,” van Ark said, adding that it is mostly “driven by the fact that the contribution of the labor force in economic growth is going to decline.”
He said labor force shortage could also become a problem emerging markets would face in the future.
“We also see that in emerging markets, which now still benefit from what economists called demographic dividend-a lot of young people added to the labor force, the force will gradually begin to decline, not overnight, but I think into the next century,” the economist said.
