The International Monetary Fund said that world output, measured at market exchanges rates, would fall in 2009 for the first time since the second world war.
This marks a huge revision – down by more than 1.5 percentage points – from the IMF's previous forecast for the year, in spite of the inclusion of the fiscal stimulus efforts by governments into its predictions for the first time.
Meanwhile in Geneva, the International Labour Organisation said the global recession would lead to a “dramatic increase” in unemployment this year, which would certainly lead to 18m-30m additional unemployed and more than 50m “if the situation continues to deteriorate”. An extra 50m jobless would take the number unemployed to 230m, or 7.1 per cent of the world's labour force.
