Using the metric of unemployment, if it wasn’t the shallowest recession in recent times, it was close. This is a better outcome than most thought likely during the second half of last year, and is much better than the “downside risk” scenarios which were contemplated at that time.
Reflecting these outcomes, forecasters stopped continually downgrading their assessments about the future earlier this year, and have become more confident over recent months that global economic activity will strengthen as 2002 progresses and that 2003 will be a pretty good year. They expect this to be led by an improving US, with Europe and East Asia turning up as well.