• Projections: The Bank of Spain warns of the slowdown: growth forecast sinks and lowers job creation

The economy slows and the labor market stagnates. So much so that, according to the Bank of Spain, the rate of job creation has plummeted in half , which is why the agency not only reduces its growth forecast for the Spanish economy but also significantly worsens its unemployment forecasts.

" Membership slowed between May and August, with monthly growth of 0.1%, " explains the regulator in the macroeconomic projections that yesterday presented, while between January and April, however, the rate was 0.2%. Therefore, and as pointed out by the director of Economics and Statistics, Oscar Arce, "the rate of job creation has been reduced by half." "In addition," adds the Bank, "the registered unemployment has stopped falling in the summer months," a period in which moderation "has been more intense" than the agency itself expected.

As a consequence, Spain will close this year with an unemployment rate that will continue to exceed 14%, while in 2020 and 2021 it will stagnate at levels close to 13%. The figures contrast with those offered by the Bank in June, with differences as notable and unusual as the increase by up to a percentage point by 2021, and draw a depletion in the reduction of unemployment similar to that provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but that the Government has tried to refute and minimize on numerous occasions.

"This moderation of employment, quite widespread among the branches of activity of the market economy, is somewhat more intense in construction and industry," the agency explains in its document, while making special emphasis on the " slowdown of the investment in housing ». "The loss of dynamism is reflected mainly in the sales, which slow down with greater intensity in the segment of the second hand", he develops, thus confirming the bad data that have been recorded in the sector during the last months.

All this, in addition, is part of an economic moderation that goes beyond the cooling that the Executive has wanted to move. A good example of this is the reduction of four tenths in this year's growth forecast , a figure that is once again as important as unusual. Thus, the Bank of Spain estimates that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will advance 2% this year by the 2.4% that advanced before summer; while for the next year it anticipates an advance of 1.7% (two tenths less); and 1.6% in 2021 (one tenth less).

The reasons for the lower growth, Arce explained, are mainly two. On the one hand there is the downward revision that the National Statistical Institute (INE) carried out a few days ago for the growth of the last quarters, which in turn is responsible for two of the four tenths of reduction in the Bank's forecast. Spain for this year. And on the other are external tensions, among which are the commercial war or Brexit, and the political instability of Spain, factors that in a combined way are responsible for the other two tenths of reduction.

In the specific case of the internal political situation, the person in charge of Economy and Statistics stressed that «the indefinition of the Government of the nation and the future of economic policies» are factors that detract from the economy's capacity for growth, and that the climate « of growing uncertainty does not help the good progress ».

And in addition, he was very critical of the political innaction, pointing out both the Government of Rajoy and the Sanchez Executive, and making it clear that, in his opinion, they have not taken advantage of the years of economic bonanza to carry out the reforms that the economy He needed to face the current slowdown or even an eventual recession. "You have to take advantage while the sun shines to fix the roof," he concluded.

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