Fra ABNamro – læs hele analysen her
- Are labour shortages for real?
- The global economy continues to rebound rapidly following the easing of lockdown measures
- This month, we upgrade both our eurozone and US GDP growth forecasts for 2021
- One potential spanner in the works for the recovery is a potential looming labour shortage
- We find that despite signs of a shortage, aggregate labour demand is still well below pre-pandemic levels, and this will likely be met with ample supply once government support measures are eased
- Regional updates: in the eurozone, economies are bouncing back after an early easing of lockdowns, and in the Netherlands, improving confidence points to a sharp rebound in consumption
- In the US, goods consumption is easing, but this should be offset by the services recovery
- Cost pressures continue to rise in China, prompting a policy response from Beijing
Global View: Is there a genuine shortage of labour supply vis-à-vis demand? This month, the eurozone recovery gained momentum following the earlier-than-expected easing of lockdown restrictions in May. As a result, we upgraded our 2021 growth forecast by 0.6pp to 4.5%, and now expect GDP to return to its prepandemic level in Q1 2022 – one quarter sooner than our previous expectation.
We made a similar backward-looking revision to our US GDP forecast, reflecting the more rapid pace of recovery so far, and now expect growth of 6.2%, up 0.4pp from our previous forecast. In both economies, we expect growth to remain strong for the remainder of the year, although the pace of growth will moderate over the coming months (in the US, momentum has already peaked). A key potential impediment to the recovery going forward is the emergence of a range of supply-side bottlenecks.
In China, the rise in commodity prices has reached a point where the authorities have taken steps to curb price rises. Elsewhere, surging job vacancies and anecdotal reports suggest labour market bottlenecks are becoming a constraint on the recovery. In our Global View this month, we dig deeper into this issue. While there are indeed signs of potential shortages, we judge that
there will be more than adequate supply to meet labour demand once government support measures (unemployment benefits in the US, and wage subsidy schemes in the eurozone) are unwound.
