VIENNA. Inflation is expected to fall again in the coming year.
The Institute for Higher Studies (IHS) estimates that Austria’s economy loses between 800 million and one billion euros in added value per week in lockdown. Whether more damage occurs depends on the duration of the current standstill. One bright spot, however, is that there has been a very strong and very rapid recovery after the previous lockdown shocks.
That also applies to the labor market. “If the lockdown is lifted in mid-December, the effects will be small,” said IHS scientist Helmut Hofer at an online press conference. A brief lockdown would only temporarily interrupt the positive trend in the labor market, said Hofer. At the end of November the number of unemployed rose to almost 400,000. The number of short-time workers has also increased to around 80,000. However, short-time work would increase significantly in the event of a longer lockdown.
As far as the economic costs are concerned, it was up to 1.4 billion euros per week at the first standstill, and the total per lockdown gradually fell to around one billion euros. The effects of habituation, new retail offerings such as “Click & Collect” and more online retailing, as well as catch-up effects in consumption lead to a decrease in costs.
In view of the current high inflation, the IHS assumes that it will normalize next year. The main drivers are currently energy prices. Services and the delivery bottlenecks had less of an impact, said Sebastian Koch, another IHS expert. “I don’t see any sustained high inflation.” (hn)
Source: Nachrichten
