Judging by recent headlines, the global economy is on a wild roller coaster that’s going mostly downhill. There are Brexit, trade wars, Italy’s fight with the European Union, renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran, a Chinese debt bomb, jittery stock markets, intermittent capital flight from developing nations, and more.
The data tell a calmer and happier story. According to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy is on track to grow a healthy 3.7 percent in 2018. That’s exactly how fast it grew in 2017. The IMF’s forecast for 2019? Again, 3.7 percent. It’s a plateau, all right, but a high plateau—call it the Altiplano of economics.
The contrast between the negative daily buzz and positive underlying conditions is sharpest in the U.S., where the expansion of the world’s largest economy has actually strengthened as it’s lengthened: Annualized growth rates in the two middle quarters of 2018 were 4.2 percent and 3.5 percent. In October alone, the economy generated 250,000 jobs.
That kind of growth isn’t sustainable in a rich nation with a slow-growing workforce and lackluster productivity growth. Still, if the U.S. makes it past June without a recession, the uptrend will exceed 120 months. That would surpass the 1991-2001 expansion to become the longest since at least 1857, the beginning of records maintained by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
So the outlook for 2019 is better than one might expect given the minicrises breaking out left and right. Strong growth in the U.S. isn’t only good for Americans; it’s good for workers in countries that produce goods and services for sale to the U.S. In fact, the U.S. is largely responsible for keeping global growth ticking along at an even pace despite the slowdown of many other major economies.
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05.19.2025