Global Economic Barometers show signs of relief in June

The Coincident and Leading Barometers rise slightly in June, breaking a sequence of three consecutive declines. However, the outlook for global economic growth remains lower in the first half of the year than expected at the beginning of the year.

11.06.2025

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In June, the Global Economic Coincident Barometer rises by 1.4 points to 93.8 points, with increases across all three major analyzed regions. The Leading Barometer, in turn, rises modestly by 0.4 points to 96.5 points, driven only by an increase in the Western Hemisphere region, while the other regions move in the opposite direction.

“In particular the Western Hemisphere – including the United States and its nearest trading partners – has this month shown clear signs of relief in the survey data underlying the two global economic barometers. The pause, and potentially the de-escalation, of the US-initiated trade war has led to improved assessments of both the current situation and outlook. However, given the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the international political landscape, it is unsurprising that these improvements do not indicate a clear recovery, let alone an upswing”, evaluates KOF Director Jan-Egbert Sturm.

“In particular the Western Hemisphere – including the United States and its nearest trading partners – has this month shown clear signs of relief in the survey data underlying the two global economic barometers.”

Jan-Egbert Sturm, KOF Director

Coincident Barometer – regions and sectors

The 1.4-point increase in the Coincident Barometer in June results from a positive contribution of 0.9 points from the Western Hemisphere indicator, followed by 0.4 points from Asia, Pacific & Africa and 0.4 points from Europe. With this result, the Western Hemisphere indicator ends a sequence of three consecutive declines but recovers less than 25% of the losses from that period. Moreover, the region continues to show the lowest level among the regional coincident indicators.

Three of the five coincident sectoral indicators rise in June, with Trade returning to the neutral level of 100 points. The Services sector stands out with its fifth consecutive decrease, accumulating a 7-point loss since February and widening the gap between itself and the other sectors.

Leading Barometer – regions and sectors

In June, the slight 0.4-point increase in the Leading Barometer results from a positive contribution of 1.1 points from the Western Hemisphere region and negative contributions of 0.4 and 0.3 points from Asia, Pacific & Africa and Europe, respectively. Like the Coincident Barometer, the increase in the Western Hemisphere Leading Indicator recovers less than one quarter of the losses incurred from March to May but no longer records the lowest level among the regions. The Leading Global Barometer leads the world economic growth rate cycle by three to six months on average.

Among the leading sectoral indicators, Trade, Economy (which is based on variables representing overall business and consumer evaluations), and Industry rise this month, while Services and Construction decline. Except for Construction, all other sectors accumulate losses over the first six months of the year, pointing to a widespread slowdown in activity.

The Global Economic Barometers

The Global Economic Barometers are a system of indicators enabling timely analysis of global economic development. They represent a collaboration between the KOF Swiss Economic Institute of the ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The system consists of two composite indicators, the Coincident Barometer and the Leading Barometer. The Coincident Barometer reflects the current state of economic activity, while the Leading Barometer provides a cyclical signal roughly six months ahead of current economic developments.

The two Barometers comprise the results of economic tendency surveys conducted in more than 50 countries with the aim of achieving the broadest possible global coverage. The advantages of economic tendency surveys are that their results are usually readily available and are not substantially revised after first publication.

The Coincident Barometer includes more than 1,000 different time series, while the Leading Barometer consists of over 600 time series. Cross-correlation analysis is used to decide which individual time series are included in the barometers. This involves correlating the individual time series with a reference series. The reference series used is the year-on-year growth rate of global gross domestic product (GDP). The reference series covers 10 years of data. A COVID period has been defined using a global stringency indicator, and a data window from January 2020 to March 2023 has been excluded from the reference series. A time series is only included in a Barometer if it shows a sufficiently high correlation and a suitable synchronization or lead with the reference series.

The series of the two Barometers are revised each month at publication and are standardized to have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10 for the 10-year period previous to the most recent observations.

The Global Barometers methodology is described in Klaus Abberger, Michael Graff, Aloisio Jr. Campelo, Anna Carolina Lemos Gouveia, Oliver Müller and Jan-Egbert Sturm (2020), The Global Economic Barometers: Composite indicators for the world economy. KOF Working Papers, vol. 471, Zurich: KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, 2020.