WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy, boosted by quickening vaccinations and signs of rapid hiring, is headed toward a strong recovery, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday.

But he cautioned that not all will immediately benefit.

“There are a number of factors that are coming together to support a brighter outlook for the U.S. economy,” Powell said during the virtual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Those factors are putting the nation “on track to allow a full reopening of the economy fairly soon.”

Still, Powell said many Americans who are out of work will struggle to find new jobs because some industries will likely be smaller than they were before the pandemic. In other cases, employers are seeking to use technology instead of workers where possible, he said.

Powell spoke along with other world economic leaders during the meetings of the two global lending agencies. The roundtable discussion also addressed an emerging trend of wealthier nations recovering much faster from the pandemic than poorer countries, in part because of much faster vaccinations.

Ngozi Oknojo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, said that the unequal distribution of vaccines could threaten the global economic recovery. Just 0.1% of vaccines have gone to low-income countries, she said.

“If we don’t do something to change the pace at which the poorer countries are getting access to vaccines, it will take a long time to get to herd immunity for the world,” Oknojo-Iweala said. That, in turn, could threaten those nations already vaccinated, by spreading new variants that could push up case counts and reverse economic progress in wealthier countries.

Powell also endorsed the idea of more government investment in the United States, though he specified he wasn’t referring to any particular legislation. President Joe Biden earlier this week proposed a $2.3 trillion infrastructure investment package.

The Fed chair made an unusual personal admission, noting that he drives by a tent city of homeless people on his way home from Fed headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“I think we need to really as a country — and I’m not talking about any particular bill — invest in things that will increase the inclusiveness of the economy and the longer term potential of it, and particularly invest in people so that they can ... benefit from the prosperity of our economy,” he said.

Biden, for his part, said Tuesday that he hadn’t yet spoken to Powell, his approach contrasting with his predecessor, Donald Trump, who often criticized and attacked Powell on Twitter, even though he had elevated him to the Fed chair position.

“I want to be real clear that I’m not going to do the kinds of things that had been done in the last administration,” Biden said, including “telling (the Fed) what they should and shouldn’t do.... So I’ve been very fastidious about not talking to them, but I do talk to the Secretary of Treasury.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is Powell’s predecessor, and Powell served on the Fed’s board of governors when she was chair.

On Tuesday, the IMF boosted its economic forecast for global economic growth this year to 6%, up from a projection of 5.5% in January. The increased growth is seen coming in large part from accelerated vaccine rollouts and the $1.9 trillion rescue package the Biden administration pushed through Congress last month.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters Wednesday that without the massive amounts of support provided by governments, last year’s recession, the worst since World War II, would have been three times more severe.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The International Monetary Fund on Thursday authorized a $650 billion expansion of the 190-nation lending institution’s resources with the aim of providing more support for vulnerable countries as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the $650 billion increase in reserves is the largest in IMF history. The move will provide badly needed reserves for poor countries struggling with deep recessions caused by the pandemic and the need to obtain and administer millions of doses of vaccines, she said.

By comparison, to combat the global recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis, the IMF agreed to an increase of $250 billion in the IMF’s reserves of what are known at the agency as Special Drawing Rights.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the IMF panel that the SDR increase would provide a “much-needed boost to global reserves.” She said it would be important for rich countries who do not need the increase in resources to supply that extra support to poorer nations.

The idea of increasing IMF reserves gained support when the Biden administration endorsed the plan in February, marking a reversal from the Trump administration which had opposed the effort.

Republican lawmakers in Congress have raised objections to the increase in IMF resources, saying the increase would benefit countries seen as U.S. adversaries such as China, Russia and Iran.

The Treasury said that the United States retained the right to refuse to engage in any SDR transactions with “any country whose policies run counter to U.S. interests.”

Officials have indicated that the first distribution of the increased reserves could begin in August after a detailed plan is submitted for approval by the IMF’s board of directors in June.

The communique from the IMF’s policy panel, made up of finance ministers representing the agency’s membership, also endorsed efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change on the global economy. That represented another change from the Trump administration, which pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, an action the Biden administration has reversed.

“In line with the Paris agreement, we commit strongly to addressing climate change through measures to accelerate the transitions to greener societies and job-rich economies while protecting those adversely affected,” the IMF communique said.

Yellen, in her remarks, said that the IMF and the World Bank had key roles to play in supporting efforts to combat climate change.

“The United States is fully committed to working with international partners to tackle climate change,” Yellen said in her remarks.

The meetings of the IMF and the World Bank were held virtually, as they have been since the pandemic struck with force in early 2020. But Georgieva said the plan is for the fall meetings of the two institutions to return to in-person gatherings in Washington, subject to success in curbing the pandemic.

The formal meetings are scheduled to conclude Friday with a session of the Development Committee, the policy panel for the World Bank. Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell are the the U.S. representatives to the sessions.

The IMF released an updated economic forecast this week predicting that the global economy would grow by 6% this year, an upgrade from 5.5% growth forecast in January. The better performance was attributed in large part to an acceleration in vaccinations and the $1.9 trillion relief program President Joe Biden pushed through Congress last month.

But the IMF communique cautioned, “The prospects for recovery are highly uncertain and uneven within and across countries” due to such factors as uneven access to vaccines and the lack of financial resources in many low-income countries.

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