Most people worldwide see another 2 years before the economy recovers from the pandemic, survey says
- People worldwide don't see an economic recovery happening in the next year, per a World Economic Forum survey.
- In America, 36% of respondents think it will happen in two to three years, and only 7% think it's happened already.
- Over half of Chinese respondents believe their economy has already come all the way back.
Most people around the world don't think their country's economy will recover from the pandemic in the next year.
A recent global survey from Ipsos for the World Economic Forum surveyed around 21,500 adults spanning 29 different countries, including the US, India, and Japan, to learn about when people think recovery will happen and how to know when it has.
Taken as an average for the 29 countries surveyed, only a small percentage, 7%, believe their country's economy have recovered from the pandemic. More respondents said it will take two to three years for their economies to recover (35% on average globally) and even more think it will take more than three years (39%).
China had the largest share of respondents who thought recovery had already happened, at 56%. On the other hand, only 7% of Americans said there has already been economic recovery, while 62% said it will take at least two years.
Although the consensus among respondents seem to be recovery will take at least two years, just who should be handling the recovery varies. On average for the 29 countries, over half "trust" either the government or big businesses with this responsibility; Americans think it falls in the hands of consumers. Respondents could choose more than one answer.
"The three countries where consumers are must trusted to drive an economic rebound are the same three where big business is least trusted to do so: the Netherlands, the United States, and Belgium," Ipsos wrote about the results. Among Americans, 60% said consumers and 35% said big businesses.
"The world is at a global turning point where leaders must cooperate, innovate and secure a robust recovery," Sarita Nayyar, the managing director at the World Economic Forum, wrote in a press release about the survey. "COVID-19 has been a litmus test for stakeholder capitalism."
"Corporations have a responsibility to work with governments and civil society to address the big global challenges while protecting public health and growth," Nayyar added.
In China, where the majority of respondents believe their economy has already recovered, more tourists and road traffic were two main signs cited that the economy has at least partly recovered from the pandemic, at 90% for each of these responses.
According to the respondents, 79% globally agreed that "people I know getting called back to work or getting new jobs" as a sign of at least a partial recovery. This was the highest share among the reasons, higher for American respondents, as well as for some other countries, at 88%.
In the US, there were still 5.7 million fewer nonfarm payrolls in July 2021 than there were in February 2020 right before the pandemic. The US added 943,000 jobs last month, which means employment recovery could be as soon as February 2022 if the three-month average of job gains continues each month, per Insider's calculations.
New businesses opening followed closely behind the employment reason as a sign of a partial or full recovery, with a global average of 78% and at 86% for American respondents.
In the US, a lot of new businesses that popped up in just the past few months. According to Yelp's Economic Average report for the first quarter of the year, 146,486 businesses opened in just that quarter. Yelp notes that this is 2% below the first quarter of 2020 and 4% above the first quarter of 2019.
Although the road to recovery seems far away around the world, there's progress being made. In the US alone, the unemployment rate declined to 5.4% in July, consumer confidence ticked up slightly that same month, and there continues to be large job gains after major losses at the height of the pandemic.