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Hotels and restaurants that will have been closed for longer, but also commerce, which will be closed until Monday, as well as service providers (such as hairdressers) are dragging the economy a lot.
In Austria, the economy contracted 4.3 percent at the end of 2020 compared to the third quarter. And compared to the first quarter of 2020, the last quarter before Corona, the economy collapsed 7.8 percent.
Even in Italy, which has been hit hard by Corona, things are looking better. Rome reports “only” a 2.0 percent drop in the prior quarter and a 6.6 percent drop in the first quarter of 2020 for the fourth quarter.
And the EU average also looks clearly better than the national figures: minus 0.5 compared to the third quarter, a minus 4.8 percent compared to the previous year.
But that’s not enough, the bad news doesn’t end in the new year either. WIFO is now creating a new economic barometer for the federal government each week. This shows that the slide down is still unmarked.
In the first week of January, the drop in gross domestic product was eleven percent compared to the beginning of 2020. And in the second week of January, the drop widened to minus 14 percent. But it is also clear that if construction and industry were not doing comparatively well, only indirectly affected by the lockdown, the overall loss would be much greater.
The economic hope now rests on the opening of trade and services. If all goes well, private consumption will also recover. The prerequisite is that the infection rate is limited.
