Austrian unemployment rate may reach nearly 9% next year
- Source: Xinhua
- [08:32 July 30 2009]
- Comments
In a report released by the Austrian Higher Study and Economic Research Institute on Wednesday, it was forecasted that the unemployment rate in Austria next year might reach a record of 8.8 percent.
The report expected that Austrian economic situation would remain weak, which would put pressure in the labor market. The unemployment rate has increased from 5.8 percent in 2008 to 7.7 percent this year.
This institute estimated further that the high unemployment rate of Austria might not drop until 2013, when a whole economy recovery would be coming. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate may only reduce to 8.3 percent at that time, which would be still significantly higher than the current level.
The director of the institute believed that the Austrian economy would stop dropping in 2010, and even increase with 0.5 percent to 1 percent. After that, the economy growth might get to 2.5 percent.
However, according to this report, the world economy would be "almost impossible" to reach strong growth in 2011, and could not be ruled out that it might remain at a "zero growth or even negative growth."
If this really happens, the Austrian economy would also be difficult to pick up. The continuity of the economy "downstream risk" remained high, said the expert of the institute Helmut Hofer.
At present, the domestic investment of Austria is reducing. The institute estimated that the investment in Austria would continue to fall this year and next year. In spite of possibility of rebound after that, however, the share of it in GDP might be still lower in 2013 than the level of 2008.
In addition, as a result of the importance of foreign trade in Austria's economy, the world trade weakness also hit the Austrian national economy significantly. This year, Austria's foreign trade has experienced 11.5 percent decline for the first time, of which the exports growth declined from 7 percent last year to 1.5 percent in 2009.
The institute also predicted that Austria's inflation rate might remain at the low level of 1.4 percent by 2013.
