Global Economic Outlook | March 2023

In KPMG’s latest Global Economic Outlook, we look at the prospects for the world economy in 2023 and 2024 and provide our forecasts for growth, inflation and unemployment for 34 countries and economic areas.

The outlook for the global economy took a positive turn early in 2023: inflationary pressures began to ease and global energy prices returned to levels last seen prior to the invasion of Ukraine. We expect headline inflation to continue falling this year – from 7.4% in 2022 to 5.3% in 2023 – and potentially reach central banks’ targets by 2024.

The labor market remains relatively tight across most countries and we expect unemployment to remain level at 5.2% in 2023. That should provide an important support for households’ incomes and consumer spending, even though real incomes are squeezed.

But despite the resilience of the labor market and the improving inflation conditions, global economic growth is expected to be relatively modest over the next two years. Following GDP growth of 3.1% in 2022, we expect growth of 2.1% this year and 2.6% in 2024.