The International Monetary Fund has sharply lowered its forecast for global growth this year because it envisions far more severe economic damage from the coronavirus than it did just two months ago. The IMF predicts that the global economy will shrink 4.9% this year, significantly worse than the 3% drop it had estimated in its previous report in April. The IMF has forecast that the global economic damage from the recession will be worse than from any other downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. For the United States, it predicts that the nation’s gross domestic product will plummet 8% this year, even more than its April estimate of a 5.9% drop. “This is the worst recession since the Great Depression,” Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, told reporters at a briefing. “No country has been spared.” For 2021, the IMF envisions a rebound in growth, so long as the viral pandemic doesn’t erupt in a second major wave. It expects the global economy to expand 5.4% next year, 0.4 percentage point less than it did in April. For the United States, the IMF predicts growth of 4.5% next year, 0.2 percentage point weaker than in its April forecast. But that gain wouldn’t be enough to restore the U.S. economy to its level before the pandemic struck.