Thanks to off-the-charts inflation, Venezuela will probably retain the dubious honor of being the most miserable economy for a second year.
Galloping inflation at an annual average of 98.3 percent last year alongside 6.8 percent unemployment earned the South American country the runaway top spot on the 2015 misery index. With no end in sight for Venezuela’s economic woes — estimates in Bloomberg surveys predict consumer price growth of 152 percent and joblessness averaging 7.7 percent — economists polled for the 2016 index see it remaining the unhappiest country.
The ranking of 63 economies is compiled by adding a country’s jobless rate and inflation, a long-standing calculation in which a higher score indicates more misery. Venezuela’s 159.7 tally for the 2016 misery index done by Bloomberg quadruples the next-worst ranking Argentina.