| Next | Section menu | Main menu |

Finance

Protectors v preservers

Callum Williams: senior economics writer, The Economist

Labour markets in the rich world will diverge again in 2021

2021 in brief

The Bank of Korea begins trials of an experimental central-bank digital currency (CBDC).
With China quickly moving towards the launch of its own digital currency, reports say
the Bank of Korea will initially test its blockchain-based CBDC in a virtual environment

LOOK ONLY at the unemployment figures, and you would struggle to believe that in
2020 the world economy has suffered its sharpest downturn since the Depression. In
some countries unemployment did soar: America’s rate rose from 3.5% to a peak of
14.7%. In many others, however, the labour market barely blinked. In October 2020
unemployment rates in Germany and Britain were only a tiny bit higher than they were
before the pandemic hit. These strange contrasts will persist in 2021.