STATEMENT: Spain must wait until 2024 for its pre-pandemic recovery, according to Unidema Research

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Spain, March 13, 2023.

Although it improves by 10.1% compared to 2021 according to the latest study by the School. Employment will continue to suffer during 2023

The latest study by Unidema Research, led by Miguel Puga and Eduardo Blasco, analyzes the behavior of the Spanish economy during 2022 and the beginning of 2023. Regarding GDP, it improves compared to 2021, but it still does not reach pre-pandemic levels, having to grow at a rate of 1.3% per year to reach that level. The employment data is worrying, where the private sector is the most affected, with a loss of 101,900 workers as of December 2022. In the public sector, the data is radically better, where more than 20,000 people found a job working for the administration. To these data must be added the "inactive" workers (discontinuous permanent workers who are not active), a figure of 443,078 workers pending review. As for the hours worked, these are still below the 2019 data, specifically 388 million hours less. Fewer hours and worse pay due to inflation, since prices increased by 5.4% compared to wages. Although the PMI Manufacturing data shown in the study shows a slight improvement, they are still in a state of contraction, far from the PMI of the services sector, in full expansion, and improving the data of previous quarters. Inflation occupies much of the concern of citizens, and the study exposes the drop in the growth rate of general inflation thanks to the moderation of prices, among others, and above all, energy and transport. The latter is directly related to energy prices (diesel and gasoline). Not so, the worrying rise in underlying inflation, which is growing. As for consumption, this is directly affected by the flow of financing, which has been tightening, in line with the ECB's policies in order to put an end to inflation. In this sense, financing, although it grew in the fourth quarter of 2022, at the beginning of 2023 the demand for it has fallen by 2%, both in consumer credit and in mortgages (1.1% and 0.6% respectively). According to According to the study, a slight growth of 2.7% is expected for 2024 and 2025, which should improve consumption data despite the growth in delinquency, partly due to the large number of variable-rate mortgages in the country. At the international level, the strength of the European labor market stands out, which maintains an unemployment rate below its pre-pandemic level (0.9%). The United States, for its part, maintains a strong labor market hand in hand with an economy that is growing above initial estimates. In the same way, China increases its growth compared to estimates, this being 3% (very far from the double-digit growth of yesteryear) and maintains moderate inflation compared to the rest of the world, of 1.8%. Full link to the study : https://unidema.com/research-estudio-coyuntura-economica-2022/

ContactContact name: Eduardo BlascoContact description: Eduardo BlascoContact telephone: 618623442