The IMF noted that steady job gains and other recent data suggest the economy is rebounding. Employers have added 200,000-plus jobs for four straight months, and the US unemployment rate has fallen to 6.3 percent. Auto sales and factory activity are increasing.

WASHINGTON — The US economy is poised to accelerate after a dismal start to the year, but the job market won’t return to full employment until 2017.

Yet growth in 2014 probably won’t top last year’s lackluster performance, the IMF said. The Washington-based organization foresees the economy growing a modest 2 percent in 2014, below its previous estimate of 2.7 percent. That would be nearly identical to the 1.9 percent growth in 2013.


The IMF blames the lingering aftermath of the brutal winter and a sluggish recovery in home sales. Years of disappointing growth mean the economy might not reach full employment — many economists say that is when the unemployment rate is 5 to 5.5 percent — for three more years.

And Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, suggested that the winter showed a wild card might be holding back the economy, one that could make predictions more difficult: climate change.

‘‘Extreme weather occurrences have repeated much more frequently in the past 20 years than the previous century,’’ she stressed. ‘‘That’s a reason to wonder about climate change and how to deal with it.’’

The unemployment rate has fallen to 6.3 percent from 7.5 percent in 12 months, but the IMF cautions that wages remain stagnant and the rate of long-term unemployment high.

The IMF’s projections match many recent private forecasts.

The IMF also highlighted the challenge for the Federal Reserve to properly time the unwinding of its policies to spur borrowing, investment, and spending.

Investors appear to be acting with a sense of certainty about Fed policies, even though central banks must respond to uncertainties about the economy, Lagarde said.


Lagarde also suggested that Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen should increase the number of news conferences she holds to six a year. Yellen is scheduled to hold one of her quarterly news conferences on Wednesday.

The Fed has kept short-term interest rates near zero to bolster the economy. It has also bought US Treasury and mortgage bonds to keep longer-term rates low, a program the Fed has been unwinding since the start of the year.

But raising rates too fast could ‘‘constrict the recovery momentum that we have observed,’’ Lagarde said.

That would have spillover effects around the world, she said.